3/20/2023 0 Comments Corpse paintTheir mascot, the Crimson Ghost, helped enamor legions of listeners to the death-obsessed imagery of songs such as "Astro Zombies" and "Death Comes Ripping". While punk rather than metal, New Jersey's Misfits favored a 50's horror/sci-fi aesthetic that included a stylized greaser take on the ghoul look. Simmons' look was allegedly a major inspiration on King Diamond, with his lascivious tongue wagging and blood spitting furthering the increasingly over-the-top horror vibe slowly infecting the genre. Heavily influenced by the glam rock sense of showmanship, but eschewing its pop-leaning musical trappings for a beefier rock and roll sound, KISS brought a gringo-ized Japanese Kabuki look to the table, with bassist Gene Simmons' "demon" character exhibiting the most evil look face paint the genre had seen to that point. Alice Cooper actually started as a garage rock band before eventually segueing into a sort of proto-metal in the 70's – Cooper never really committed to a particular sound until his decidedly metal resurgence in the mid-80's – but the garish face paint, on stage beheadings and grand guignol vibe were part of his entertainment package from the earliest days. In terms of almost unintentionally evil-looking imagery, Brown even managed to one-up his immediate successor, the biggest of all shock rockers, one Alice Cooper. Probably the most direct antecedent to what would later define the black metal look was England's Arthur Brown, who helped to bridge the gap between shock rock and acid rock in the mid-to-late 60's along with a flamboyant sense of theatricality that made frequent use of tribal masks and black-and-white face paint. His acolyte, Screaming Lord Sutch, was himself an irregular face paint wearer, but did similarly employ horrific imagery – albeit of a tongue-in-cheek variety – as on his 1963 single "Jack the Ripper". Hawkins did not originate the use of face paint in the nascent genre, although his use of horror-related props and voodoo imagery were influential in bring a morbid predilection to rock and roll. "Shock rock" is typically agreed to have been ushered in by the success of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, best known for the immortal hit "I Put a Spell on You". An entire volume could be written documenting these traditions, but for our purposes we can content ourselves with its evolution within the bounds of rock and roll. ![]() Certainly the cultural tradition of face painting predates written history, both for ceremonial religious reasons as well as military ones.
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