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Title: Mercyful Fate - Raise Your Hands & Do the Sign
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1982, Metal, Heavy Metal Proto-Black Metal, Copenhagen, Denmark 8/26
Condition: New (BC) | Members: Mercyful Fate (N/A)
Cultural Facts:

1. Early Years: King Diamond and Hank Shermann had previously played together in the Danish band Brats, but CBS Records disliked the increasingly heavy direction they wanted to pursue. They walked away and formed Mercyful Fate in 1981 with an almost absurdly simple goal, as King later remembered it: they wanted to create the heaviest band in the world. This October 5, 1982 Copenhagen performance catches them barely a year into that mission.

2. Macabre Prop: King's famous stage skeleton was actually human. His brother knew a student whose father was a doctor teaching with donated cadavers, and King ended up with a skull and leg bones after the medical work was finished. He named the skull Melissa, carried it onstage, and fashioned human leg bones into his microphone stand. The skull was eventually stolen at a show and never recovered.

3. Occult Life: The Satanic imagery was much more than a costume for King Diamond. He spent years seriously studying occult philosophy, later joined the Church of Satan and became personally acquainted with founder Anton LaVey. An early journalist visiting King's Copenhagen apartment found a Satanic altar, inverted cross, burnt Satanic Bible and the human skull Melissa, and came away convinced that the beliefs behind Mercyful Fate's stage show were completely sincere.