![]() It seemed so unreal.” Entranced by the larger-than-life personas of Gabriel and Alice, teenaged Kim Petersen said to himself: I want to do that. “I was right at the front, and I felt that if I could have reached up and touched Alice’s boot then – pfft! – he would disappear into thin air. I was bombarded with emotions.” The other concert was Alice Cooper on the spectacular Welcome To My Nightmare tour. “It was a very visual show,” he recalls, “with Gabriel in his different costumes and make-up. The first was Genesis, on their final tour with singer Peter Gabriel. What also had a profound effect on him were two rock concerts he attended in Copenhagen in 1975. It doesn’t tell you that you must believe in a god, it’s about the power of the unknown – which is the best word for these things that I believe in.” ![]() “When I read The Satanic Bible,” he recalls, “it presented to me a life philosophy. This led eventually to the work of Anton LaVey. What drew him to the dark side was not rebellion, but a curiosity informed by Black Sabbath albums and what he read about Jimmy Page’s interest in the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. There was strict discipline in the way the boys were raised, but “nothing religious whatsoever”. His father worked as a foreman at a storage facility, his mother was secretary to the city’s mayor. He was born on Jin Hvidovre, a suburb of Copenhagen. He had what he describes as “a very normal childhood”. “I was mesmerised by the way that music danced around,” King says now. It was in 1970 that the path opened up, when 13 year-old Kim heard a sound that would change his life – the sound that Jimmy Page conjured from his guitar in the solo on Led Zeppelin’s Dazed And Confused. And he begins at the point of transformation – the moment when a bright working-class boy called Kim Bendix Petersen was set on the path to becoming spooky satanic rock screamer King Diamond. In talking about his life and career, our conversation extends to more than two hours. The years he has spent living in America have softened his Danish accent. “Right now things are good for me,” he says. When he speaks to Classic Rock at his home in Texas he is in buoyant mood. This summer, in addition to making some high-profile European festival appearances, King Diamond plays a one-off UK gig at the Forum in London where he will be performing his landmark 1987 album Abigail. For long periods his brand of music was out of sync with the changing times, but through it all he has retained a loyal cult following and has continued to tour and make albums both with his own band and in a number of reunions with Mercyful Fate. Later came rumours that he was going to be sued by Kiss for infringement of their image rights. In 1984, in an interview with Kerrang!, he was branded a hokey Satanist, a fraud. ![]() Over the years there have been hard times for King Diamond. The band’s style of complex, heavy riffing was an inspiration to James Hetfield, who has stated that “Mercyful Fate was a huge influence on Metallica”. And in Mercyful Fate’s music there was a depth and power that went far beyond the primitive bludgeoning of Venom and early Slayer. He was a scholar in the dark arts, and a member of the Church Of Satan, the organisation led by Anton Szandor LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible. King Diamond was entirely serious about this stuff. And yet there was something that set him and Mercyful Fate apart from bands such as Venom and Slayer, who posed as Satanists purely for shock value. With his masked face and satanic songs rendered in that mock-operatic shriek, he was frequently ridiculed in the music press. King Diamond appeared as much a caricature as any of them. There was Venom, the original, devil-worshipping black metal band Manowar, muscle-bound warriors from New York declaring ‘Death to false metal’ Thor, a former bodybuilding champion from Canada, whose stage act included breaking concrete blocks on his chest. Not only a survivor of more than 30 years in the music business, but also a survivor of multiple heart attacks that almost killed him six years ago.Īt the time when Mercyful Fate rose to prominence in the mid-80s there were many heavy metal acts with an over-the-top image. What is certain is that he is a survivor. To others he’s no more than a clown, a Halloween bogeyman with a singing voice like Rob Halford being boiled alive. To some he’s a cult hero, a master of theatrical heavy metal, innovative and influential. In his long career, both with Mercyful Fate and as leader of the band in his own name, King Diamond has remained a divisive figure.
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