When Death Makeup Became a Black-Metal Identity—and Then Lost Its Shock

Bizarre & Occult Runway4/5 wildness

When Death Makeup Became a Black-Metal Identity—and Then Lost Its Shock

Mayhem, Emperor, Satyricon, Dødheimsgard, and Attila Csihar / 1990s

Mayhem vocalist Per “Dead” Ohlin helped define corpse paint as something more unsettling than the theatrical makeup of Kiss or Alice Cooper. According to Mayhem bassist Necrobutcher, Ohlin did not wear it merely to look fashionable or “cool”; he wanted to look genuinely dead. Drummer Jan Axel “Hellhammer” Blomberg likewise identified Ohlin as the first member of the scene to explicitly link the painted face with a corpse-like appearance, while Necrobutcher credited him with coining the term. As Mayhem and other early Norwegian black-metal bands popularized the image in the early 1990s, corpse paint spread internationally and became the scene’s most recognizable visual code. Its success eventually created its own backlash: Emperor and Satyricon abandoned the makeup because its individualistic meaning had been weakened by mass imitation and trend culture. Other musicians pushed against the monochrome formula, including Attila Csihar with neon colors and Satyricon and Dødheimsgard through deliberate experimentation.