Don't Break the Oath

Don’t Break the Oath is Mercyful Fate’s second full-length album. It was released in 1984.

The style Mercyful Fate employed on Don’t Break The Oath resembled a mixture of post-Judas Priest and Iron Maiden heavy metal with darker elements that could be compared to Black Sabbath and similar “doom” bands of the early to mid 80’s such as Angelwitch, Witchfynde and Candlemass, while lyrically preoccupied with Satan and the occult. The album was remastered and subsequently re-issued on Roadrunner Records in 1997. Metal-Rules.com named this the greatest extreme metal album of all time.

Don’t Break the Oath is considered an important early influence on the black metal scene along with Venom’s second LP “Black Metal”.

Track listing:

1. “A Dangerous Meeting” – 5:10
2. “Nightmare” – 6:19
3. “Desecration of Souls” – 4:54
4. “Night of the Unborn” – 4:59
5. “The Oath” – 7:31
6. “Gypsy” – 3:08
7. “Welcome Princes of Hell” – 4:03
8. “To One Far Away” – 1:31
9. “Come to the Sabbath” – 5:19
10. “Death Kiss” – 4:30

* The track “Death Kiss” is a bonus track on the remastered version of the album that was released in 1997. This is an old demo version of the track “A Dangerous Meeting”.

* The actual name of the 7th song is “Welcome Princes Of Hell”, not “Welcome Princess Of Hell”. It was a title misprint, where the lyrics were correctly written in the original pressing but the title wasn’t. The distinction can also be heard in the song (the prince “is” vs. prince “s”), as well as the plural connotation of the lyrics “I’m alone with my friends, We will be back, we will be back”.