Player No. 102heavy-metal
Hank Shermann
Mercyful Fate's founding guitarist and the writer of most of Don't Break the Oath -- the Dane who put Judas Priest's twin-guitar precision under King Diamond's falsetto and, in doing so, wrote the blueprint half of Scandinavian metal followed. His early-80s rig was as plain as the music was theatrical: a self-painted Japanese Stratocaster with a single DiMarzio Super Distortion, into 100-watt Marshall 1959 and 2203 heads run loud. Alongside Michael Denner's Flying V he built a harmony-guitar language that Metallica, Slayer and a generation of Gothenburg bands took directly from these records.
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ShermannFILE 102
The Shermann catalogue
Field notes on Shermann
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