Corpse Paint - History and Usage

History and Usage

The earliest rock groups to don makeup similar to corpse paint included Arthur Brown in the 1960s, Alice Cooper and Kiss in the 1970s and, later that decade, punk rockers like The Misfits and singer David Vanian of The Damned.

In the 1980s, Hellhammer, Venom, Death SS and King Diamond of Mercyful Fate (who used corpse paint as early as 1978 in his band Black Rose) were the first extreme metal groups to use corpse paint. Other groups soon followed suit, including Hellhammer's later incarnation Celtic Frost. Brazilian band Sarcófago also pioneered the look, being dubbed by Metal Storm magazine as the first band with a "true" corpsepaint. Early corpse paint was meant simply to highlight an individual's features and make them look "dead".

Bands of the early Norwegian black metal scene used corpsepaint extensively. The first Norwegian black metal band to wear corpse paint was Mayhem, whose singer Per "Dead" Ohlin began wearing it in the late 1980s. According to Necrobutcher, Mayhem's bass player: "It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss and Alice Cooper used make-up. Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool." In the early 1990s, other Norwegian black metal bands followed suit and their style and sound was adopted by bands around the world. However, some of the Norwegian bands—such as Emperor, Satyricon and Burzum—stopped wearing corpse paint, often citing its loss of meaning or trendiness due to use by so many bands.