King Diamond is born in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 14th 1956, under the name Kim Bendix Petersen. He has a brother, which is 3-year younger than him, with whom he used to share his bedroom when he was kid. Along with his brother, he was raised in the small town of Hvidovre, right outside of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. He considers he had a good childhood, a bit strict, but still a lot of freedom. He had a lot of trust from his parents as he really was a type of an Angel-person, he never gave them many reasons not to trust him though. Even though his parents considered themselves christians, they always been very proud of what their son would became. During the Second World War, King’s dad was a freedom fighter in the Danish resistance against the Nazis, then he was discovered and had to flee to Sweden to escape the Gestapo as he and some of his group were almost caught. He told King some horrible stories about what he experienced back then, and King often dreamed about this, like if he was in his dad's shoes. At the age of 15, in 1971, King got his first turn-table and bought his first two albums: "Fireball" by Deep Purple and "Master Of Reality" by Black Sabbath. Another band which really got King into music was Led Zeppelin, especially with their first album, as King really liked Jimmy Page’s guitar sound. That's actually what pushed him to buy his first guitar. King probably started to smoke cigarette at this time, actually before he started to sing, but however, he never really was interested about taking drugs. He smoked pot twice, but it wasn't really his thing. Also, during his youth, he had almost started a career as a professional soccer player. He has been playing for quite a while, and he was so good that he even became player of the year in the club that he played in, one of the years. After he finished grade school, he went to secondary school, but he was missing often; he preferred to listen to old Mountain records at a friend's home instead. He wasn't very hard-working as a student, but he received good grades because he could easily memorize things; he only needed to read through his friends' homeworks before writing a test. In school, his behavior was good and his classmates respected him. He have been in a clique of three or four rock fans in his class who were more or less left alone as long as their grades were okay. They used to play tricks on their teachers sometimes, or they skipped class a few times, but they were quite harmless. At some point, the music really started to be an interest for him, just playing for fun. He didn’t think much about what would happen, but it was hard to balance both soccer and music, so he had to give one u. He gave up the soccer at that time and started concentrating more on the music.

He began his musical career in 1973 when he entered as a guitarist in a four-piece band called Brainstorm. It was with this band that he did his first concert, in 1976; the community had a big place where there was about 10 different bands that rehearsed. They allowed to have a concert in that place. Each band had to bring their own equipment and play 3 songs. Brainstorm already had their reputation, with make-up and everything on; it was really different from all the other bands that were all playing pop music. King first had the idea of wearing make-up after seeing the Alice Cooper show "Welcome To My Nightmare" in 1975, probably when Alice performed at The Falkoner Theater in Copenhagen, on September 3rd of that year. Even now, Alice Cooper remains King's greatest influence. But not only Brainstorm came and played metal, but at this first time, they played so loud that no one else were even half as loud as them. It was already very different as the members of Brainstorm thought they were going to be huge in their time, so they decided to not use their real names, so they used artist names; one was Mike Wist, another was Jessie James, and Kim was King Diamond. However, King has no clue where this name came from, but it stuck to him quick. During this time, King also had his first job; he worked as a chemist for two years after he had left school at the age of 21.

In the meantime, in March 1977, in Copenhagen, Denmark, a young man called René Krolmark got his first guitar, a LesPaul copy. He got into music in school where Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were played at the parties. Later, he got hooked on Kiss, that inspired him to pick up the guitar; he wanted to play like Ace Frehley. Then he discovered Judas Priest, which really had a huge impact on him. That would always remain a great inspiration in his songwriting from this moment. Then Michael Schenker and Uli Jon Roth surfaced in his life and became huge inspirations too. René would later have a major impact on King's musical career as he formed the punk-metal band Brats with some of his friends in May 1978. René changed his name for Hank De Wank, and the other guys in the band were Franz De Zaster (real name: Michael Gorm; vocals), Mickey Rat (real name: Michael Hillerup; bass) and Eddie Haircut (real name: Milan Balsgaard; drums). With its new line-up, Brats gained some attention from the Danish punk scene, and appeared on the "Paere Punk" sampler with 3 songs, which was released by a local Indie label called King Pear. Then the band went much or less into dissolvement, and in spring 1979, as Hank was improving his musical skills, he recruited two new musicians, both friends of him: Yenz (real name: Jens Arnsted; vocals and bass) and Monroe (real name: Lars Nybo; drums). As they were rehearsing, it became obvious that they needed a second guitar player to sound heavier, so another friend of Hank joined the band: Denner (real name: Michael Denner). Hank and Denner first met during a punk concert in 1978. Denner noticed Hank was wearing a leather jacket with Black Sabbath and Kiss patches. In those days, it was a big thing to meet someone with the same musical tastes, so they were introduced and later became friends. With these new members, the band took a heavier direction, and in January 1980, they signed a 3-album contract with CBS who first released the song "B-Brains" as a free single included in a CBS sampler LP with well known foreign artists. Brats then were the first Danish hard rock band to secure a record deal of this kind. In February and March 1980, they entered Metronome Studio B in Copenhagen to record their first album, which was later mixed at Sweet Silence Studios. While they've been waiting for their album to be released, Brats began touring within Denmark right away in spring 1980. In the following month of August, the self-titled album "Brats" was released. There has been 2,000 copies of this album made. Basically it was an heavy metal album tainted with a punk feel, out of the 12 songs it contained, 8 were metal, 3 were punk and 1 was a Russian folk song, sung in Russian by Denner. This album was very useful to them as it gave them some very important studio experience; a good deal of exposure on TV and radio throughout Europe, through a quirk of fate, it brought them together with English manager and publicist John Kibble. Contrary to all expectations, it didn't sold very well in Denmark, although it made some good sales numbers in France, so much that at a certain point, they were in the process of setting-up a French tour. Two months later, in October 1980, some tensions within the band caused Denner to leave, who has been replaced by guitarist Carsten Van Der Volsing. The main part of criticism of the band was aimed at Yenz's vocals; the band needed a new vocalist.