Mercyful Fate will return to the stage in August 2027, more than three years after their last concert.
The Danish band confirmed on Thursday (August 6) that they will appear at Leyendas Del Rock, held August 11 to 14, 2027 in Villena, Alicante, Spain.
The band posted on social media: “España! Mercyful Fate will be playing Leyendas Del Rock Festival 2027! We will see you next August… Stay Heavy!””
Their most recent performance was at Summer Breeze in Brazil in April 2024.
The gap between shows has a reason. Mercyful Fate have been working on their first studio album since 1999’s 9, and it sits behind another record in the queue.
Bassist Becky Baldwin told “The Metal Voice” that the material has reached demo stage, with the instrumental parts largely finished and King Diamond now working on the songs. “The Jackal Of Salzburg“, debuted live in Germany in June 2022 and played again at Psycho Las Vegas, will be on it, and she said Diamond had already done substantial work on a demo of that track.
The order of business puts King Diamond‘s solo album first, followed by a tour behind it, with Mercyful Fate after that. Diamond has described the solo record as picking up where the band left off when the pandemic hit, and as the first of two albums telling one story.
Should the album arrive, it will be the band’s first in 27 years.
King Diamond on vocals, Hank Shermann and Mike Wead on guitars, Bjarne T. Holm on drums and Baldwin on bass.
Baldwin, based in Birmingham, England, became a permanent member in January 2024. She had already toured with the band in autumn 2022, standing in for Joey Vera when Armored Saint commitments made him unavailable.
Mercyful Fate formed in Copenhagen in early 1981 around Diamond and Shermann, joined by guitarist Michael Denner, bassist Timi Hansen and drummer Kim Ruzz. Two demos in 1981 led to a deal with the Dutch label Rave On Records and a self-titled EP in November 1982, which found its way onto metal radio and drew attention to a sound nobody else was making.
Roadrunner Records signed them in 1983. Melissa followed that year, Don’t Break The Oath in September 1984. The band spent two months touring the United States behind the second album, crossing the country repeatedly on bills with Motörhead and Exciter, and closed the year with five German dates alongside Motörhead, Girlschool, Helix and Talon.
Their first show of 1985 filled a large converted cinema in Copenhagen. By April that year the band had split, with Diamond launching the group under his own name and releasing five albums through Roadrunner before moving to Metal Blade.
The reunion came in summer 1992 with a new Metal Blade deal signed with Brian Slagel. In The Shadows arrived in 1993 and sold out a US tour. Five more albums followed, ending with 9 in 1999 and a European tour supporting Metallica, during which Diamond and Shermann joined the headliners onstage for the Mercyful Fate medley Metallica had recorded for Garage Inc. the previous year.
Tours of the US and South America closed that chapter. The band then went quiet for over two decades, surfacing only in 2011 when members joined Metallica for their 30th anniversary shows in San Francisco.
They returned in 2022 with festival appearances and a North American headline run, their first since 1999, supported by Kreator and Midnight.
