Mercyful Fate is a heavy metal group, and helped inspire black metal (although they never played black metal themselves) founded in Denmark in 1980. Most people will probably have heard of them in the context of the commercially successful heavy metal band Metallica doing a medley of Mercyful Fate covers on the album Garage Inc. The band is infamous for their satanic stage shows, and their excessive use of corpse paint.

See also: King Diamond (born as Kim Bendix Petersen)

Statistics

• Genre: Heavy metal, Black metal
• Country: Denmark
• Status: Active
• Time: 1980-

Members

Current member

• King Diamond (Kim Bendix Petersen) - Vocals, Keyboards
• Mike Wead (Mikael Wikström) - Guitar
• Hank Shermann (Rene Krolmark) - Guitar, Bass.
• Bjarne T. Holm (Bob Lance) - Drums
• Sharlee D'Angelo (Charles Peter Andreason) - Bass

Former members

• Carsten Van Der Volsing - Guitar
• Benny Petersen - Guitar
• Michael Denner - Gutiar
• Timi 'Grabber' Hansen - Bass
• Kim Ruzz - Drums
• Snowy Shaw (Tommy Helgesson)- Drums
• "Old" Nick Smith - Drums
• Morten Nielsen - Drums
• Lars Ulrich - Drums (Guest)
• Jan Mulsen - Drums
• Johnny Marshall - Keyboards

Discography

• Mercyful Fate (1982)
• Melissa (1983)
• Don't Break the Oath (1984)
• The Beginning (1987)
• Return of the Vampire (1992)
• In the Shadows (1993)
• Time (1994)
• Into the Unknown (1996)
• Dead Again (1998)
• 9 (1999)