We are just picking it up again because the stars are aligned correctly now. CREEM: How does it feel to be back on stage with Mercyful Fate? KING DIAMOND: It's very cool and a lot of fun, but people have misunderstood what we are doing now.
TIMI HANSEN UPDATE
show in nearly 25 years at Psycho Las Vegas.ĬREEM caught up with King Diamond over Skype from his pad in the Dallas suburbs to get an update on everything Mercyful Fate, his eponymous solo band, and beyond.
TIMI HANSEN PLUS
After demolishing festival stages across Europe with a set of songs from their first three releases plus a new track called “The Jackal Of Salzburg,” they’ll play their first U.S. Fast forward to… right about now, and Mercyful Fate are back in action. King Diamond enlisted Armored Saint and Fates Warning bassist Joey Vera to take up the spot, but then COVID-19 hit and fucked everything up for everyone. Sadly, Hansen succumbed to cancer later that year.
(Diamond, meanwhile, has been regularly releasing King Diamond records since 1986.) Part of Fate’s classic lineup-King Diamond, Shermann and Hansen-reunited in 2019 to play shows with 9-era members Bjarne T. Metallica went as far as to play a Fate medley on their 1998 covers album, Garage Inc., appropriately titled “Mercyful Fate,” and that was after fellow Dane Lars Ulrich played drums on “Return of the Vampire” from Fate’s 1993 album, In The Shadows.Īnd yet, Mercyful Fate haven’t released an album since 1999’s appropriately titled 9-and essentially split up shortly thereafter. Slayer guitarist Kerry King has gone on record repeatedly about Mercyful Fate’s influence (satanic themes, dueling guitars, longer, more progressive song) on their 1985 breakout album, Hell Awaits. Neither band has been shy about Fate’s impact. You can draw a straight line from Fate’s first three releases to Slayer and Metallica. But forget all that for a minute and consider this: King Diamond and his early Fate bandmates-guitarists Hank Shermann and Michael Denner, bassist Timi Hansen, and drummer Kim Ruzz-also inspired two of the biggest bands in metal history. That, and as a bona fide member of the Church Of Satan and a personal friend of late Church founder Anton LaVey, King Diamond also has the do-what-thou-wilt credentials that those young Nordics aspired to-and still do to this day. The Norwegian leaders of black metal’s violent second wave-Mayhem, Darkthrone, Immortal, Emperor, etc.-took part of their sound and most of their look from Mercyful Fate. They helped lay the foundation for black metal with their blasphemous self-titled 1982 EP (also known as Nuns Have No Fun), 1983’s Melissa, and 1984’s Don’t Break The Oath. Screaming out of Denmark in the early ’80s, the band delivered a satanized maelstrom of heavy metal, prog, and ’70s hard rock led by the impossibly high-pitched vocals of corpse-painted frontman King Diamond. Prepare yourself for the understatement of the century: Heavy metal wouldn’t be the same without Mercyful Fate.
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