In the beginning was... Kim Bendix Petersen. Long time before having created KING DIAMOND or MERCYFUL FATE, the young King began to play guitar in an early Danish heavy-metal formation called Brainstorm (in 1973, he was 16 or 17 years old). His greatest influences were (and seem to remain the same): Led Zeppelin and, after, Kiss, Judas Priest,...
In 1978 King traded his guitar work for vocals in another Danish band: Black Rose.
He actually possesses the only Black Rose demo in existence.
The real carreer's beginning starts when the heavy-punk band BRATS asked to King some help for new musical materials. They released (with the future MF's musicians Hank Shermann & Michael Denner) some demos together like: "Some Day", "Death Kiss", "Combat Zone", "Love Criminals". During the same year, Hank and King helped also Timi Grabber Hansen and Michael's band DANGER ZONE and released other demos. MERCYFUL FATE was born...
One year later, in 1982, they recorded in two days an untitled EP (aka "Nuns Have no Fun" or "A Corpse without Soul") (the songs of this EP can be found on the avalaible CD "The Beginning") and the first version of "Black Funeral" for the compilation "Metallic Storm" (available on the remastered CD "Don't break the Oath" as bonus track). After interviews with Malcom Dome, the huge Dutch festival "Aardschok" (they played in front of 6000 people!),... MERCYFUL FATE was important enough to deal with Roadrunner Records and recorded two "cult albums": "Melissa" and "Don't break the Oath". Unfortunately, the band split up 'cause King (and other musicians) didn't want to follow the new "hard FM" way that Hank liked.
So, King created his new band KING DIAMOND with Michael and Timi. Michael and Timi left too because of familial reasons (Michael: after "Abigail" he was replaced by the stupid M. Moon, after "Time" he was replaced by Mike wead; Timi: after "Abigail" he was replaced by Hal Patino and after "In the Shadows" by Sharlee d'Angelo). The brilliant drummer, Kim Ruzz, is postman, now (?!).
After "The Eye" (and the compilation "A dangerous Meeting"), King decided to leave Roadrunner Records which didn't promote well KD anymore (we can suppose that they prefered their new band SEPULTURA... ahahah... What's Sepultura today?).
In 1993 King, Hank, Michael & Timi decided to reform MERCYFUL FATE and recorded "In the Shadows" (with an appearance of METALLICA's Lars Ulrich). The same year, they did the first part of METALLICA's concert in Denmark and were the guest stars of the huge Eindhoven's festival.

FOR A COMPLETE BIO, READ THE SPECIAL BOOKLET INCLUDED IN THE "THEM" LP. OR READ THE MALCOME DOME's INTERVIEW IN MY INTERVIEW SECTION