21. Why do they wear corpsepaint?
"Corpsepaint," or the practice of a musician painting his face in a menacing manner, has been in black metal since its earliest days. Corpsepaint first originated in simple costuming tradition, and was even used by some hardrock stars like Alice Cooper during the 1970s. However, it took on a slightly more indepth connotation during the second wave. Early second wave black metallers based their corpsepaint on several sources, mainly, only victims of the bubonic plague, who had pasty skin and black spots around their eyes and mouth, but also on the traditional concept of "war paint" as it was practiced by warriors during the dark ages. In Germanic folklore, the "Oskorei" or "Wotan's Army" was a procession of supernatural, barbaric warriors who would ride across the sky on black steeds during Yule, terrorizing the countryside; it was said that their faces were painted in a fiercesome way, and they were a host quite hostile to Christianity.
For the artists who use it, corpsepaint is just like wearing a mask: its lycanthropic and represents taking on a entirely different personality. It can really help black metal musicians feel the spirit of their music, to avoid stage jitters, to amplify the feeling of black metal in a much more significant way. While wearing corpsepaint, the musicians actually feel less human, less mundane, less "earthly;" its a form of escapism. Unfortunately, many contemporary black metal bands wear corpsepaint simply because they feel obliged to; they see it as merely part of the image of being black metal. Since they wear corpsepaint without a clear understanding of how its supposed to be used, their version of the paint can often appear extremely ridiculous. Corpsepaint has been used so often by so many bands (and many times in a pitiful fashion,) that the practice now carries a tinge of embarrassment which discourages more serious artists from using it to enhance their art.
