From February until April 1993, Mercyful Fate was in the studio in Dallas recording a new album, their first studio album in 9 years. The chemistry was still there within the band; they felt like they have made "Don't Break The Oath" a few days before. Originally, the band asked Roberto Falcao to work on the album as a producer, but unfortunately, he was unable to leave Denmark and come to the USA to record that album with them. He then proposed the band to produce the album themselves and just hire a good first engineer, which had to be Tim Kimsey. While they were recording the album, the band decided to re-record one of their earlier demo song, "Return Of The Vampire" as a bonus track on the CD version only, with guest drummer Lars Ulrich from Metallica. The whole thing started when the band, in the studio, got a phone call from Lars Ulrich who wondered if he could come visiting. The band had already talked "loose" about how fun it would be to do a kind of jam with him. Metallica had just ended a series of concerts in Mexico, and Lars had one week of spare time from the playing. He therefore flew to Texas together with his technician, and they jammed together a whole day, mostly Mercyful Fate tracks, but they also jammed some blues stuff. The next day, the band decided that they should record "Return Of The Vampire", and they finally managed to do it after many major technical problems; if you listen closely you might hear that the production might be a lot lamer than the other material, and that's because they had to mix the recording 5-6 times before they were satisfied. Lars wasn't pleased with the original drumsound, so they had to send copies of each new mix to Lars. Metallica were at their world tour, and that didn't made the situation any easier; the band sent one mix to Honolulu, one to Japan, one to Australia etc. until they were all satisfied. On that album, Michael chose to use a song he originally written for his other band, Zoser Mez. It was a song which has been written after the release of their album "Vizier Of Wasteland". Michael chose to use this for "In The Shadows" because he meant that the song should be used, and it could very well be used in connection with Mercyful Fate; this song ended up being "A Gruesome Time".

After the recording sessions, Snowy Shaw moved from King Diamond to become the new Mercyful Fate drummer as Morten couldn't later go on tour with the band due to a problem with an injured knee. Everybody in the band agreed that Snowy was the best choice to fill the spot left by Morten. Then came out the album, "In The Shadows", on June 22nd 1993. The band also made 2 promo videos, "Egypt" and "The Bell Witch". The latter is based upon a true story where a little girl poisons her father.

Even though the tour began only on September 8th, in New York, the first show after the release of the new album took place on May 28th 1993 with long-time friends Metallica, at the Gentofte Stadium, in Copenhagen. After only two shows, Timi left the band definitively, and for the same reasons he left the King Diamond band six years before: to spend more time with his family. His substitute was King Diamond's bassist, Sharlee D'Angelo, as insisted drummer Snowy Shaw who always remained his good friend. He came in to finish the rest of the tour, and then stayed permanently in the band. It was such an honor for him to join the mighty Mercyful Fate as he was a long-time fan of the band since the early eighties when he hung out with Snowy. He asked Timi how to do a thing or another on bass, but Timi simply told him to do it his own way. For some others things, Timi simply couldn't even remember how to play it.

A live EP recorded during the previous tour have then been released in 1994. This EP, titled "The Bell Witch", was available only for a limited time. However, this EP was something of an accident; the whole purpose was to release a video for the "The Bell Witch", which actually consists of a lot of clippings from various shows during the last tour. Then they putted another song for radio purposes, "Is That You, Melissa?", but as they thought it was cheap to only put 2 studio songs coming directly from their new album, they decided to add 4 live songs to the CD, to make it worth it to the people that would go after it. These songs were recorded during their latest tour at The Palace, in Los Angeles, on October 8th 1993, and were mixed for the CD in March 1994.

Shortly after that, from May to August 1994, Mercyful Fate entered The Dallas Sound Lab Studio to record its next album. Right after that, in the months of September and October, it was the turn to the King Diamond band to come in the same studio to record its upcoming album, which had to be released during the next year. Released on October 25th 1994, Mercyful Fate's new album, "Time", was actually their second studio album since the reunion. With this album, the band wanted to experiment a bit but it didn't always worked the way they had planned. However, they really felt that the songwriting was much better than on the previous one, as well as the production, which they found clearer. On the lyrics side, some of them were more related to the older style of the early Mercyful Fate albums such as "Angel Of Light", by example, which is directly related to the song "The Oath". There was also a song called "The Preacher", which was written about a guy called Robert Tilton, which was a preacher from Texas who was definitively more interested of taking money from vulnerable people than religion. For the release of "Time", King decided to bring a new visual delivery by wearing a black suit and a hat, just like he was stepping out from having attended a funeral in the 1800's. He actually bought the coat and cape at a costume-rental shop. This look had to be his new traditionnal trademark for the folowing years. To promote the "Time" album, the band have shot 2 other promo videos: one for "Nightmare Be Thy Name" and the other for "Witches' Dance", which shown actual witches in the video.

Halfway through the "Time" tour, Snowy left the band as he prefered doing his own things; he had too many ideas of projects that he wanted to realize instead of just playing drums. In addition, Snowy never really enjoyed touring. He has then been replaced by Bob Lance for the American part of the tour. Bob previously worked with Hank in the past as he was the drummer of Fate, the hard rock band Hank created after the demise of Mercyful Fate in 1985. Shortly after he entered the band, Bob soon went back to using his real name: Bjarne T. Holm.

Even though Mercyful Fate reunited, King wanted to keep his solo band running too as the two bands are quite different; Mercyful Fate is more of an occult oriented band, where King Diamond is definitely more horror oriented. After the last King Diamond studio album, "The Eye", the members were Andy La Rocque, Snowy Shaw, Sharlee D'Angelo and Mike Wead. However, the last three have all left the band since; they never even rehearsed all together. The three new members to enter the band were all Americans musicians who lived in Dallas: Herb Simonsen on guitars, Chris Estes on bass and Darrin Anthony on drums. All of them came from the band Mindstorm. Even though the album has been written 5 years before its actual release, "The Spider's Lullabye" came out only on June 15th 1995, as King just didn't have the opportunity to release it before that date. When the album was written, in 1991, the band members actually rehearsed the songs, but never with the whole band; they rehearsed alone, each on their side on the demo songs recorded on cassette that later became songs on that album.For the first time since "Fatal Portrait" in 1986, this new studio album was not a concept album from the beginning until the end, since only the last 4 songs were linked together: "The Spider's Lullabye", "Eastmann's Cure", "Room 17" and "To The Morgue". Originally, there were some songs that were supposed to be included on the album but which, however, have never been included, such as "Strange Wings", "Eternal Darkness" (which talked about the pharaohs' slaves in Egypt) and "The Return Of Libby" (which talks about a ghost haunting a house until certain family members are dead).

In January and February 1996, Mercyful Fate got back in the Studio for the recording sessions of its upcoming album. Meanwhile, the band has been approached by Götz Kühnemund of Century Media Records to participate to a Judas Priest tribute album. The band, which its members are long time fans of Judas Priest, especially King and Hank, have accepted without any hesitation. The song "The Ripper" have been chosen to be covered, so it has been included on the album "Legends Of Metal: A Tribute To Judas Priest".