Hank Shermann

Hank Shermann — born in Denmark in 1958 — is Mercyful Fate's founding guitarist and principal composer, and the author of the music underpinning one of the foundations of European extreme metal. It was he who put the band together in Copenhagen in 1981 and who defined its sonic architecture. Mercyful Fate's riffs do not follow the logic of the British heavy metal of the time: they are long, modulating, full of key changes and sections that never return. A track like "Satan's Fall" on Melissa (1983) runs over eleven minutes and crosses whole passages without repeating anything — it is compositional writing, not songwriting. That structural complexity, combined with the occult lyrics and King Diamond's falsetto, is what made Melissa (1983) and Don't Break the Oath (1984) permanent references. Norwegian black metal bands of the 1990s cited those records as a direct starting point, and Metallica recorded a medley of four of the group's compositions on Garage Inc. (1998). He shares the guitars with Michael Denner in a complementary relationship that also became a model: harmonies in thirds, alternating solos and lines that cross in counterpoint. The band dissolved in 1985, returned in 1993 and was revived in 2019.