Corpse paint
From Wikimetal
Corpse paint (or corpsepaint) is a black and white makeup mostly used in black metal bands, in order to increase the dark and evil side and feel of the music. This kind of makeup is also worn to show an interest or a fascination for death, evil, decay, or disgust for humanity.
Such musicians most often have their faces painted in white, with the eyes sockets and lips in black, suggesting a rotting face. Although corpse paint usually refers to black and white coloring, some bands experiment other colors, such as blood red (Gorgoroth, Ragnarok) or blue and yellow, as in Dødheimsgard.
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Origins
Corpse paint possibly takes its roots in the German/Nordic folklore. We can indeed find similarities with:
- the appeareance of the Oskorei[1] members, an army[1] of souls from dead persons, in the nordic mythology. These soldiers would look like ghouls (cadaveric looking demons) ;
- the makeup used in expressionism movies (expressionism being the trend to deform reality from an emotional point of view), such as the one worn by Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari[1]. These films were soaring in Germany in the beginning of the years 1900s. This thus leads to the possibility of influences coming from old Teutonic tales.
History
Corpse paint made its first appearances in (hard) rock bands, with notably Arthur Brown is the 1960s, who launched a trend by influencing other famous bands such as Alice Cooper or Kiss, repossessing this visual style for their own shows.
It's only 10 years after that corpse paint was first used in metal, with notably Hellhammer and King Diamond (as soon as 1978 is "Black Rose"), and a bit later in extreme metal with Celtic Frost and Slayer (in their beginning). The Brazilian band Sarcófago was also a pionneer in this style, maybe eeven the first to have worn corpse paint as we usually see today.
Under the impulsion of Euronymous (Mayhem), corpse paint will take a great predominance in black metal, to the point of a clearly representative icon. Euronymous will indeed have a great impact on lots of Norwegian bands (Immortal, Satyricon, Emperor, Darkthrone, etc.), musically as well as visually. This trend quickly spread around the world and most of black metal bands took back this imagery (Abigor in Austria, Judas Iscariot in the USA, Nargaroth in Germany, Nehëmah in France, Sigh in Japan, etc.).
Some very well-known bands gave up this kind of makeup nowadays, but others see corpse paint as an essential part of black metal.
Outside metal
Corpse paint was also used in other artistic movements (whether musical or not), most notably by punk rock band The Misfits for instance (in an openly parodic way, with references to 1950s horror movies).