Interview

Mercyful Fate Guitarist Hank Shermann Discusses Denner/Sherman EP "Satan's Tomb"

Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing, Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield are all considered legendary twin-axe assassins. Michael Denner and Hank Shermann certainly deserve to be part of this conversation. The two are responsible for creating absolute magic on classic early Mercyful Fate records “Melissa” and “Don’t Break The Oath” (and Shermann on every MF recording).

From balls-to-the-wall heavy riffs like the devilishly delightful post chorus dirge on “Come To The Sabbath” or the infernal trot on “Black Funeral” to dark spiritual levitation of notes that lead into the black heart of “Desecration of Souls,” their guitar play is technical, memorable, melodic and chilling, often further enhancing King Diamond’s ghostly wails.

While Denner left Mercyful Fate in 1996, he appeared with the band in 2009, Shermann and Denner reunited in the early 2000s to form Force of Evil with other King Diamond/MF alumnus Bjarne Holm and Hal Patino. Now, nearly a decade after releasing the last Force of Evil album the duo is at it again, this time using their namesake. Mercyful Fate has largely been inactive for a decade and a half, so for many this newly assembled band provides a needed fix of Mercyful Fate. While there are certain differences between this group and MF, the two guitarists have a writing style that just can’t get away from Mercyful Fate comparisons. If you like the guitar play in Mercyful Fate, there is a good chance you’ll enjoy Denner/Shermann.

“Satan’s Tomb,” the debut EP from the dynamic duo was released by Metal Blade on October 2nd. Composer Hank Shermann spoke with Metalunderground.com about the making of said album, assembling the players, and of course what’s going on in the Mercyful Fate camp.

Rex_84: How do you feel now that “Satan’s Tomb” has been released?

Hank Shermann: This is what we’ve been waiting for. We’re not very patient so. When we delivered the masters to Metal Blade Records, it might have been April of this year, we were told it was going to be released October 2nd. Whoa, do we really have to wait so many months. That’s how it is and it has always been like that, but now it’s here. The release is on. The promotion is on and we have the full package. We have streaming, downloads, digipack, ordinary CD and the vinyl, last but not least. We are very satisfied with it being out and the reviews have been fantastic. People take this band for being a brand new band, so there’s not many that say it doesn’t sound like King Diamond, it doesn’t sound like Mercyful Fate. We’ve been avoiding that kind of scenario, though, so we are very happy for that because that’s not our goal to copy anything like Mercyful Fate.

Rex_84: I hear a lot of riffs that are really similar to Mercyful Fate. Do you hear that from your fans?

Shermann: Yeah, my point when I said we are not trying to sound like Mercyful Fate that’s almost impossible since me and Mike [Denner] have a sound together on the very early records. I created most of the music and King created all the lyrics, so of course my song writing style would be very close to what we did in the early ‘80s. That’s where we want to be. We don’t want to take it in any other direction. Hopefully, people can hear that it’s me and Michael based on our earlier records like “Melissa” and “Don’t Break the Oath.” It’s detectable in all of the songs somewhere.

Rex_84: Yes, I definitely hear that in the solos and the melodies. Even the first song the title track. There is that opening melody that totally reminds me of the song “Melissa.”

Shermann: Yeah, you have to remember that all those legendary, classic themes that Michael Denner did—“Melissa” solo, “Into the Coven” solo—he did all of those classic solos. Michael is doing more theme-based solos that stick in your head. Many of those are very memorable and have a sound only he can do.

Rex_84: When you wrote the album, did you both write your own parts?

Shermann: No, it’s me making the music and then I send it off to the singer, which in this case is Sean Peck. We ping pong a little bit forth and back. I’m like the composer of the music. Then I go visit Michael at his place and we discuss his guitar parts, like solo parts. Where he is going to play a solo on top of. Just make sure it’s the right set of chords to get the best out of him. I’m doing it all and that’s what I’ve been doing since I started playing the guitar. That works fine. It’s the same with Mercyful Fate. I started doing the songs and then King with “Don’t Break The Oath” came into the song writing and did some phenomenal songs like “Come To The Sabbath” and “Don’t Break The Oath.” Two top notch songs with Mercyful Fate. Classic tunes even to this day.

Rex_84: Did Sean Peck write the lyrics?

Shermann: Yeah, so Sean is one hundred percent responsible for all the lyrics. There is no censorship or anything. He can almost write about anything. That’s how I like it to be. Of course, it should not be too silly. It should not be too much of a copy. He can keep going. He has tons of ideas and it’s the perfect fit because he has all the qualities—the essence of all the singers we favor in the world. That would be early Judas Priest with Rob Halford, King Diamond/Mercyful Fate, Geoff Tate from early Queensryche, Bruce Dickinson from early Iron Maiden and stuff like that. I think Sean covers all of these qualities that these singers have. Also, he has a tone that is very significant, very signature. He can be pretty crazy, meaning that he can go nuts in his performance. He can do theatrical stuff. He can do melodic stuff and he can write about anything. And he really works fast. That’s what I do as well. When we start jamming on a song, I send him music and the next day I already have some ideas from him. So that works perfectly.

Rex_84: The lyrics remind me of Mercyful Fate, too, because they are Satanic. Was it important to write about evil on this album?

Shermann: You have to remember that Sean is like ten years younger than King and maybe five/six years younger than me and Michael, so he grew up on Mercyful Fate and King Diamond, especially King Diamond, so at an early age he was inspired by King Diamond as a person and his lyrical writing. Even with his band Cage he did a tribute to King Diamond called “King Diamond.” So that tells me that he’s a huge fan. So if you want evil stuff he’ll do that. Depending on what type of music I send to him. He also likes the comic universe like super heroes. He can go many ways, but first of all we want to play something unique with Denner/Shermann. Now, we are all together for the first time. So far we have a mini-album, an EP, four songs and now we are onto doing the album.

Rex_84: Snowy Shaw joins you once again. He played lived with Mercyful Fate. What does he bring to the group?

Shermann: I think he brings a tremendous amount of importance to this album because of his drumming. He’s so unique. He’s a world class, signature player. It was a really high-talent performance that he did. That’s really important. You can put on the album and just listen for the drum sound—all his technique and patents on the cymbals. Everything is so crazy. That’s why we chose him. Also, he was a former Mercyful Fate/King Diamond drummer. Since he is one of the best signature drummer out there we needed to at least ask him and he was right on to it. He’s also going to be on the album. That’s important.

Rex_84: You’ve played with Marc Grabowski in Demonica. What’s it like to reunite with him?

Shermann: I created this band in 2009 called Demonica. It was a little more metal-based, thrash-based music. Maybe a little more early Slayer style. I’ve known Marc Grabowski from Colorado since 1996. He’s totally a natural talent. He’s an excellent bass player and has so much to show. I can’t wait to let him shine on the next album because there are different parts where he can use his talent. Just before we decided to release Denner/Shermann, I was working with my solo output with a band called Shermann Tank. Marc was the singer and bass player in that band. We already had two or three songs going and then me and Michael said let’s do Denner/Shermann. I said, “Ok, Marc, listen to this. Me and Michael have decided to go on with Denner/Shermann. Let’s put Shermann Tank on the shelf for now. And by that I would like to invite you to come over to Denner/Shermann and be the bass player.” I thought that would be far and on top of that we got to have an awesome bass player.

Rex_84: How does this compare to Force of Evil, which also contained Michael Denner?

Shermann: That was a similar idea. Hal Patino from King Diamond and Bjarne Holm from Mercyful Fate on the drums. It’s something with the singer [Martin Steene]. The singer did his best performance of his life when he was that front man that shined through, like whoa. You have King Diamond. You have Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson. You have these front men that are truly great. Maybe music wise we were slightly different from what we are now. With “Satan’s Tomb” we are focused on basically starting all over as if it were 1981. That’s kind of how I feel. We really enjoy doing that. It’s cool for me to let my creativity flow with no restrictions, no filters, just pretend it’s 1981, make the songs and see what comes out.

Rex_84: What are your plans for Denner/Shermann? You’ve talked about making another album, perhaps a full length?

Shermann: Yeah, we have seven songs almost completed on the full length. I can only tell you it’s a bit more heavier, a bit more intriguing. I can’t wait to get it out there; it’s phenomenal! Now we kind of have a formula and I can take it steps further. I slightly changed the song writing style a bit to get it even more evil, get it more aggressive and heavier. You have to hear it in order to understand it. We have seven songs we’ve written and are maybe looking at ten total. We are planning on starting in the beginning of December to record the album. Mixing in late January, early February and release May 2016. We are trying to make a quick follow up from the EP to gain some momentum and to also not have too much time in between the releases. I would like it to be at least within a year.

Rex_84: Will this group play live?

Shermann: I hope so (laughs). If promoters and club owners will invite us to play, we would be more than happy to come out and play. We are still waiting to book our first show. It might be a festival somewhere in Europe, likely somewhere in Europe to start with. Then around that festival or festivals we will try to book some club shows in between. We are still waiting for that first show, but our tour booker/manager is still out there hunting for what feels best for us and also what is possible financially because it is a lot of logistics. There are flights, hotels, bus, roadies. A lot of things need to be covered expenses wise in order for us to go out. We must come out. That’s very important in building this band that we actually get out there and show ourselves and play all the classics people expect us to do. Then, present some of the new material from the new album.

Rex_84: So when you play live, you will play some Mercyful Fate songs?

Shermann: People will throw tomatoes at us if we don’t. Being an original twin-axe duo it is expected that we would play at least two or three Mercyful Fate songs. That’s certainly what we intend to do. We already talked about a few songs that we would like to play. With Sean Peck singing it will be really special because he can pull it off like it were King singing, at least for the fans’ sake and for our enjoyment.

Rex_84: Mercyful Fate hasn’t released an album since 1999 when you released “9.” King Diamond has been busy touring lately. Do you talk to King often? Is there any chance of Mercyful Fate getting back together?

Shermann: To approach your question, all I can say at this time is King is very busy with his show touring Europe and now he’s going to tour the States and then going to Europe once more. When we get a chance to talk, I use Skype like I’m doing here (in the day’s previous interviews) and we talk about Mercyful Fate business. We still have some merchandise going on and future things. We still have a contract with Metal Blade. So we’ve been talking about possible events in the future, maybe a live performance. Hopefully, in the near future, not too far away, I would personally like a lot to do another Mercyful Fate album, at least for the fans’ sake. We have a big fan following. Everyone is asking me about Mercyful Fate as you are doing now. It’s like something people really want. If King can find the time and feel good about it and we’ve done our stuff with Denner/Shermann and can get some time off, I think it would be cool to do it at some point. We just have to wait. I cross my fingers.

Rex_84: There are a lot of people waiting for it. I have to tell you, though, I really do like this album you’ve done. It’s like getting a fix of Mercyful Fate just because it has the guitars.

Shermann: It’s based on the same vibe. It’s like no matter what we do, that’s how it’s going to sound. It’s not like we are trying hard to sound that way. That is how we sound. This is how I create songs. That’s my song writing. That’s how I compose songs. This is how Michael plays. When we play together it sounds a certain way. And one thing that was important to us mixing the album is we kept it old school. We could have easily chosen to have a full power, blasting production. Everything on eleven. Or we could chose to have a bit more of an ambient sound, a more natural sound with more dynamics and then less output. So we chose to try to do it a little more old school. I think it went pretty well. For the next album, we will probably make the sound heavier. I imagine the guitars having a more dominant role and the drums might be a little more juicer, so a little step up in the mixing station.

Rex_84: It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. I’ve been a fan for twenty-plus years, since 1990.

Shermann: So you didn’t get to experience all the cool things in the ‘80s?

Rex_84: No, I didn’t. I wish I did. I’m not quite old enough.

Shermann: For Mercyful Fate the decade of the ‘90s were great because we had five U.S. tours. We had three South American tours. We had two European tours. A lot of albums went out within those eight years on the ‘90s. It was a good decade for us as musicians because we were constantly in action rather than sitting at home waiting for something to happen. We were always doing albums and on tour, so that was a really good decade. We made some descent albums, but even with every album and how great it was, there was always a reference to “Don’t Break The Oath” and “Melissa.” I think that Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath all had the same thing (laughs). They only want to talk about “The Number of the Beast” you know (laughs).

Rex_84: “In The Shadows” and “Time” were incredible records.

Shermann: Reflecting on “In The Shadows,” everybody was so excited to be back together, so I think you can hear that in the song writing. I was going nuts with “The Old Oak Tree.” I had to give my best there. So there was a lot of excitement going into the songs and King did some really cool songs on “In The Shadows” album. We went to Dallas to record it at Dallas Sound Lab north of Dallas. We did all our albums in Dallas, so we went to Texas for eight years in a row. So I’ve been in Dallas for a full year all together. For the month thing in Irving, Texas in a rented apartment while we recorded the album. That was like a big adventure and experience for all in the band.

Rex_84: You did that tour with Cathedral and Flotsam And Jetsam.

Shermann: That was in ’93. I have a very fond memory of those tours. It was really fun. Cathedral is a really heavy band. Flotsam And Jetsam—I don’t know if Jason Newstead was with them then. I think he was in the band at an earlier time. Good experience. There is always something happening on the road, especially when there were more bands touring together. That is what we did in the ‘90s. We were touring with two or three bands at a time. In the ‘80s, well, we did the same thing as well. When we went to the States in ’84 we toured with Exciter and later on we toured with Motorhead.

Rex_84: Did you meet Lars Ulrich on that tour?

Shermann: No, we had already met him. He is from Copenhagen as we are, so we have previously met him on shows in Copenhagen with other bands before he moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco—Los Angeles it was—and formed Metallica. When we were playing San Francisco the guys came out to the Kabuki Theater in October, they all came down to the show and we invited them on stage. They were pretending they were playing along with the songs. Lars got a guitar and James and Kirk were drunk. It was good party.