What is Don't Break the Oath?
{{italictitle}} {{Refimprove|date=July 2013}} {{Infobox Album | name = Don't Break the Oath | type = studio | artist = [[Mercyful Fate]] | cover = | released = September 7, 1984 | recorded = May 1984 at Easy Sound Recording in [[Copenhagen, Denmark]] | genre = [[Heavy metal music|Heavy metal]] | length = 43:11 | label = [[Roadrunner Records|Roadrunner]] | producer = [[Bill Turjancik]], [[Henrik Lund]] | prev_title = [[Melissa (Mercyful Fate album)|Melissa]] | prev_year = 1983 | next_title = [[In the Shadows]] | next_year = 1993 }} '''''Don't Break the Oath''''' is the second studio album by [[Mercyful Fate]], a heavy metal band from [[Denmark]]. Some [[musician|people who make music]] and [[music critic|people who talk about music]] think it is one of the best heavy metal albums ever. __TOC__ {{clear}} ==History== In the 1980s, there were a lot of bands in Europe playing heavy metal. Many of them were playing music like bands from the [[United Kingdom]], in a way that was called the [[New Wave of British Heavy Metal]] (or NWOBHM for short). There were a lot of [[hard rock]] bands, too, and there were a lot of things hard rock bands and NWOBHM bands both did. Mercyful Fate was one of the first few NWOBHM bands to be different from hard rock bands on purpose. [[King Diamond]], the singer and leader of Mercyful Fate, painted his face with upside-down crosses and wrote lyrics about Satan, Hell, and things like that. [[Hank Shermann]], the band's guitarist, played very fast and with a lot of guitar solos to help make the band sound evil. Mercyful Fate had already started to do these things in 1983 with their last album, ''[[Melissa (Mercyful Fate album)|Melissa]]''. ==Sound== ===How they played their instruments=== Hank Shermann and [[Michael Denner]] wrote the songs in a way that fit well with King Diamond's singing. Like on ''Melissa'', King Diamond sang in a [[falsetto|high-pitched way]] that was different from other heavy metal singers. ===What the songs are about=== All of the ideas in all of the so