Seventeen more to scrape a costume together

As promised, another weekend brings three more entries of our Everyday Is Halloween series: East German Olympians, Chuck Schuldiner, and corpsepainters!

October 14th
If the Olympics had a rock ‘n’ roll event, the East German women’s team would have looked like The New York Dolls. But there was nothing juiced about the sound: rife with sloppy blues covers, their proto-punk designation gamely obscures the jazz roots David Johansen held dear. Unfortunately, their influence on punk and hard rock was more artificial than the sublime wit that eluded many of their followers. They just looked so fabulous!

October 15th
Kids carry hatchets, machetes, and chainsaws to trick ‘r’ treat. Heavy metal guitarists carry B.C. Riches to shred ‘n’ slash. Kerry King, Slash, Dave Mustaine, Nikki Sixx, John Christ, and Chuck fucking Schuldiner all played B.C. Riches at one point in their careers, and all were about as badass as you can get at that same point in their careers. – Trevor Fisher

October 16th
Though King Diamond deserves a nod, the consensus is that corpsepaint became a black-metal phenomenon after frontman Thomas Gabriel Fischer, of influential extremists Hellhammer, adopted ghostly facepaint. Though only musically active in the early-’80s, the Swiss singer’s hollow visage was the unlikeliest face to launch a thousand ships. Acts like Mayhem, Gorgoroth, and Marduk took the imagery to comical extremes, but you really don’t have a hit until there’s a dedicated Web site, and for that we offer you ratemycorpsepaint.com.

Category: Features, Monthly