We love a band that brings their authentic selves to the stage — yet, ironically, that sometimes means they’re decked out in heavy, face-altering makeup.
Plenty of groups have gone the jeans-and-T-shirts route, and that suits them perfectly fine. But there’s also been a ton of heavy acts that have incorporated their flair for the dramatic via wild costumes and visage-embellishing layers of makeup. That brand of theatricality has transformed them into evil-clown-faced stage presences, satanized skeletal sermonizers and more. And their looks have made lasting impressions on fans.
With this in mind, we asked Revolver readers to rank the greatest acts to ever slap on greasepaint to thrill a crowd, and they ranked them accordingly.
Mudvayne
From L.D. 50 through to “HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE,” Mudvayne’s music has merged meaty, nu-styled beatdowns with a feverish energy informed by aggressively-popped bass tones and vocalist Chad Gray’s dexterous and monstrous roar.
While those sonics are more than memorable enough for their fans, the foursome also became instant visual icons the second we saw their eyeball-popping makeup jobs in the “Dig” video — Gray’s cobalt hairdo complementing his silver-squiggly facial designs, guitarist Greg Tribbett looking something like Darth Maul’s punk-coded cousin.
While they wiped off the greasepaint for a short spell, Mudvayne’s eventually got back to their roots and reapplied the makeup — Gray admitting in an interview that the band “never really wanted to take it off in the fucking first place.”
Behemoth
Across a lengthy career, Behemoth’s unendingly brutal, occult and blast-panicked music has built upon the extreme sounds of the early black-metal scene. With that in mind, it only makes sense that vocalist-guitarist Adam “Nergal” Darski’s makeup-heavy visual aesthetic would similarly be rooted in the ghastly, ghoulish corpse-paint look of those first-wave innovators.
Nergal’s makeup has evolved several ways over the years, from triangular swashes of black covering his eyes to a muted, ashy full-bodied mottling. He’s paired those looks with a variety of sleeveless cloaks, sacrilegiously subversive papal headwear, facial chains and more — but each time, he cuts a striking figure.
Fans have often loved Behemoth’s sound at its darkest, but Nergal’s overall look is a shining example of stage makeup done right.
Limp Bizkit (care of Wes Borland)
Limp Bizkit leaned into their sonic niche pretty quick — a go-to feel informed by thick, headbangingly percussive riffs, turntable scratches and brag-hearty raps from frontman Fred Durst. Sure, they’ve deviated from their rap-metal formula a touch since the Nineties, but there is an established Bizkit sound. And fans love ‘em for it.
Guitarist Wes Borland’s stagewear, meanwhile, has thrown us for a loop myriad times — which has also been awesome. The Lon Chaney of nu-metal has probably shows fans more than a thousand faces at this point, whether pairing liquid paper-milky facepaint with all-black contacts, showing up as a magenta-mohawked Day of the Dead skeleton, or presenting himself as a multi-eyed-and-mustachioed cowboy.
Each time the “Break Stuff” riffer has re-arranged his costume, it’s an event.
Ghost
First and foremost, Ghost’s appeal over the years is primarily owed to the band’s infectiously melodic take on occult-themed hard rock — the Swedish act offering up a series of beloved LPs since delivering their debut, Opus Eponymous, in 2010.
Nevertheless, it’s also fair to say that fans flocked to the band because of an engaging and intricately plotted-out visual aesthetic. And at the front of the stage, that begins with the look of their frontman (or rather frontmen).
From dour-faced OG Papa Emeritus I, to the more ghoulishly skeletal Papa Emeritus II, to the sequin-favoring Papa IV, to the bat-winged-and-chrome-plated Papa V Perpetua, each of Ghost’s lead singers have established their own whimsical tone with their chosen makeup, masks and stagewear.
King Diamond
King Diamond was not the first rocker to show up onstage in pancake makeup, but damned if he isn’t one of the most memorable metal singers of all time because of it.
Though the Danish legend once got a cease-and-desist letter from KISS’ Gene Simmons over what the latter felt was a demonically derivative black-and-white facepaint job, the King ultimately put his own unique twist on a horror-inspired look — several, actually.
At times, he’s used deep, angular, exaggerated splotches of black to cover his eyes like a domino mask. His beard has been uniquely gunked up with paint, too. The inverted cross on his forehead — or, through one era, a field of crosses pocking his pores — paired perfectly with the super-satanic nature of early Mercyful Fate songs like “Black Funeral.”
For those reasons and more, Revolver readers agree that King Diamond’s makeup-slathered look is just as iconic as his music.