Who was that masked band?
A brief history of musicians in disguise
GWAR
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Before making their mark as “the guys in the flower pot hats,” the post-punk smart assses in Devo booked gigs around their native Ohio claiming to be a Foghat cover band, only to show up wearing clear, plastic face masks and peddling deconstructed takes on rock standards. The masks were abandoned for flashier attire, but hooded mascot Booji Boy stayed on.
The Residents
Being a band that once employed a Richard Nixon mask on stage, it’s appropriate that The Residents have maintained their anonymity longer than Deep Throat did. Those giant eyeballs—and one voodoo skull—do a pretty good job, but true credit belongs to The Cryptic Corporation, the band’s management team and an organization that could show Tricky Dick a thing or two about misinformation.
TISM
TISM (short for “This Is Serious, Mum”) shares in the tradition of masked pranksterism established by Devo and The Residents, only in a blunt, over-the-top fashion that sucks all the fun out of it. Zero in on the chiding lyrics about celebrity culture (boring), capitalist greed (more boring), and abuses of paid sick leave (most boring), and you just might forget you’re listening to grown men in puffy silver suits.
Spinal Tap
Looking for a way to “fight the drabs,” the members of semi-fictional heavy metal group Spinal Tap reluctantly listen to girlfriend/hanger-on Jeanine’s plans to give everyone a makeover based on their astrological sign. In her vision, Viv the Libra gets a black-and-white “yin and the yang;” Nigel the Capricorn has “sort of a goat look;” and poor Derek the Cancer is transformed into some sort of hideous crab/spider monster. Granted, they don’t actually go through with it—and okay, none of this is real, per se—but it’s included here to pose a pertinent question: How can any masked bands watch This Is Spinal Tap without feeling like complete assholes?
The Mummies
Like the tombs of the ancient pharaohs, 1960s garage punk has been consistently pillaged, packaged and paraded ‘round the world—Nuggets is the new Treasures Of Tutankhamun. Taking that correlation one step further, Bay Area snot-noses The Mummies wrapped themselves in toilet paper and their songs in thrift-store fuzz. A band entombed before its time, The Mummies recently played their first show in 15 years.
GWAR
Take away the foam heads, hardened rubber spikes, and imitation bodily fluids and GWAR is a fairly run-of-the-mill thrash metal band—albeit one with the kind of stunted sense of humor typically found in snickering eight-grade boys who draw dicks on everything. The group’s eternal Halloween stage shows are practically Broadway caliber in their excess, but even Andrew Lloyd Webber on his best day couldn’t have come up with a character with a mythology as needlessly complex as that of Oderus Urungus, who literally has fans (who call themselves “Bohabs” for some reason) arguing over decade-old storylines involving a detachable penis nicknamed “the Cuttlefish.”
The Locust
The members of The Locust have to be supervillains. That’d explain the sonic brutality, drummer Gabe Serbian’s abilities on the double-bass pedal, and the head-to-toe nylon uniforms. If they’re not already supervillains, they ought to look into it—the uniforms are intimidation perfected, and those squelching synths would surely bring any populace to its knees.
Los Straitjackets
Kitsch culture was hot enough in 1995 to rate a spot in Entertainment Weekly’s hallowed “Cool Issue”, but while throwing bones to Pulp Fiction, Nick At Nite and Spike Jonze, EW neglected perhaps the kitschiest entity of all—Los Straitjackets, the surf-rock combo that begun favoring sharp suits and luchadores masks one year earlier. Nick At Nite eventually picked up The George Lopez Show and Jonze got off at Being John Malkovich, but the Straitjackets continue riding the kitsch wave well into the 21st Century.
Daft Punk
Electronic music is already somewhat cold and faceless, but Daft Punk takes that aesthetic to the extreme with its sleek, LED-enabled robot helmets and dark leather jumpsuits. Initially adopted as a way of combating shyness, the costumes have become an inextricable part of the group’s mystique—a dazzling visual signifier of the merger of man and machine that their music represents. Also, they help hide the fact that you’re basically watching two homely French dudes check their e-mail.
According to the biography Slipknot: Inside The Sickness, Behind The Masks, the nü-metal nudniks in Slipknot initially chose to obscure their faces “until their music was fully developed.” Apparently they’re still working on that. In the meantime, the band has developed a steady side business selling official replicas to kids looking to piss off Mom and Dad, or maybe just kill a few classmates. But these larger controversies aside, Slipknot has also become the official martyr of the modern “artifice versus art” debate: In nearly every interview ever conducted with them, members have protested the idea that its rotating collection of masks—which range from standard-issue skulls and gauze nightmares to zippered S&M fantasies—are a mere gimmick to move a mediocre product (perish the thought!), insisting that they’re intended to draw attention away from themselves and “put it directly on the music.” Um… Are you sure that’s wise?
Lordi
Lovingly known as “The Monsters Of Finland,” theatrical metal act Lordi’s gruesome—though somewhat generic—image was reportedly inspired by a dream frontman Tomi Putaansuu had of a skeleton playing a rock concert. (Perhaps he dozed off in front of the Grateful Dead’s video for “Touch Of Grey”?) Naturally, the band’s elaborate foam latex heads have drawn comparisons to GWAR, sparking a faux-rivalry (do any of these guys do anything sincerely?) that often finds GWAR’s Oderus Urungus impaling a replica of Mr. Lordi’s head on a stake during concerts. Here’s hoping he doesn’t try that shit in Finland: After winning the Eurovision Song Contest—the first explicitly fake musicians to do so—the members of Lordi have become heroes in their homeland, inspiring everything from commemorative postage stamps to their own brand of cola.
The typical surgical-masks-and-scrubs attire of Liverpool garage-punk weirdos Clinic is perfectly tied to their music, which is full of both airy textures that wheeze like respirators and odd organ bleeps that sound as though they’re being spit out by a Hammond heart monitor. At first glance, Abe Blackburn’s seething, indecipherable lyrics could be blamed on their being filtered through layers of gauze—but then lines like “bits of batter cook in the glow” don’t make much sense naked either.
MF Doom
Most rappers love nothing more than the sound of their own names (cf. Wu-Tang Clan, Mike Jones, etc. etc.) and wouldn’t dream of hiding their faces with anything more than the shadow of a Starter cap. But then, MF Doom isn’t like most rappers: He draws more inspiration from Stan Lee than Scarface, hiding behind a cartoonish persona based on Marvel supervillain Doctor Doom and never appearing without his intimidating metal faceplate, which was reportedly modeled on Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiator. Kind of makes Kanye West’s Shutter Shades look even wussier in comparison, no?
Coq Roq
Threats of legal action from Slipknot weren’t enough to stop Coq Roq, the “rooster metal” stars of a 2005 ad campaign for Burger King’s chicken fries. While Coq Roq may have worn masks inspired by Slipknot (and GWAR and KISS), its sound was far more trad than the Iowans' nü-metal thrash. Another key distinction: Coq Roq was funny on purpose.
