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Shock rock is the combination of rock music or heavy metal music with highly theatrical live performances emphasizing shock value. Performances may include violent or provocative behavior from the artists, the use of attention-grabbing imagery such as costumes, masks, or face paint, or special effects such as pyrotechnics or fake blood.
Jul 3, 2024 · Shock rock, which incorporates elements of glam rock, hard rock and metal, is one of the most theatrical genres of rock music. The best shock rock bands are known for their edgy, over-the-top live performances.
- Reference
- Alice Cooper. Like rock’n’roll’s answer to Jason Voorhees, Alice Cooperis the man that refuses to die. He’s been decapitated, electrocuted, stabbed, poisoned, hung, you name it – only the latter proving to pose any threat to his livelihood one freak night at Wembley Stadium when a safety wire snapped.
- Papa Emeritus / Cardinal Copia. Sweden’s Ghosthave become rock music’s fastest-growing cult – the sinister ministers headlining festivals, winning GRAMMYs and topping their national charts in the process.
- Marilyn Manson. The Antichrist Superstar. The God Of Fuck. The Angel With The Scabbed Wings. One-time journalist Brian Warner would transition into something that’s been given many names over the years, but as Marilyn Mansonhe terrified America perhaps more than any musician before, and indeed since his rise to infamy in the mid-'90s.
- GG Allin. A performance artist like GG Allin – if indeed such a term applies – simply wouldn’t have been able to exist in today’s world. And for the most part that’s a good thing.
- Screamin' Jay Hawkins
- Screaming Lord Sutch
- Arthur Brown
- Alice Cooper
- King Diamond
- Gwar
- Rob Zombie
- Marilyn Manson
- Rammstein
- Ghost
This is where it all began, and it began more or less accidentally. "I Put a Spell on You", Hawkins' most famous piece and arguably one of the most important blues tracks that would shape the future of rock'n'roll, was originally meant to be a mellow ballad. However, when it was time to record the song, the whole band got utterly shitfaced and inst...
Inspired by the horror extravaganza of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, one David Edward Stuch, esquire, reinvented himself as Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow, and stepped on stage roughly a decade after Screamin' Jay to follow in his footsteps. Despite his self-proclaimed utter inability to actually sing, Screaming Lord Sutch, alongside his band ca...
The name and deed of Arthur Brown may have fallen to obscurity in recent years, but at the height of his career, he was sharing stages with such immortal contemporaries as Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and The Doors – to name but a few. A member and founder of countless projects, Arthur Brown got the shock horror torch (metaphorically) passed...
The eternally-awesome Alice Cooper never settled down just with dressing up as a coked-up goth Karen from hell, but instead took the performance aspect of shock rock on a whole new level. And so, Alice decided to theatrically stage for himself a myriad of dramatic on-stage executions, including (but not limited to) getting decapitated, hung, electr...
When the Danish musician Kim Bendix Petersen first graced the stage as King Diamond, he gave shock rock a whole new meaning. Toting about in a top-hat and Kiss-inspired face paint with inverted crosses instead of cat whiskers while carrying a skull of a real human being, he was a grisly sight to behold. He even took the on-stage theatrics to a whol...
Gwar one-upped their predecessors by performing in full costume as the fictional alien techno-barbarians led by Dave Brockie as Oderus Urungus. The band would even go on to build an elaborate mythology of portrayed characters, thus bringing their on-stage performance and lyrical content together. Since the band's inception in 1984, Gwar swooned aud...
Although Rob Zombie began his rise to infamy around the same time as Marilyn Manson, the dreadlocked, corpse-paint-wearing horror aficionado never really shocked the mainstream as his colleague, but he more than made it up with sheer creativity. And so, Rob Zombie came up with an unique aesthetic that drew inspiration from vintage horror cinema, '6...
Combining the names of a timeless sex symbol and one of the most notorious serial killers in popular culture, Marilyn Manson had a statement to make right from the get-go. Using the grotesque in his appearance and performance, Manson used his art to put up a dark mirror standing in contrast to everything thought as "good" and "decent" in the Christ...
The Neue Deutsche Harte behemoths from Rammstein are no strangers to controversy. Although a lot of it came unintentionally –from the untimely airing of the music video of "Ich Will" (which depicts band members essentially as terrorists celebrated for their violence) at the night of 9/11 to the band being accused of indirectly inspiring several ter...
Whether you like him or not, Tobias Forge, the mastermind behind the ever-increasingly-popular Ghost, got many things right when it comes to music in general and his chosen field in particular. For all its apparent controversy, shock rock has always been driven by the make-believe – the spectacle of gruesomeness, not gruesomeness for its own sake –...
- Vladimir Nikolić
Aug 12, 2020 · British rock legend Arthur Brown helped pave the way for shock and… let’s call it “flame-boyance.” One of the biggest singles of 1968 was “Fire,” a wild rave-up of organ-driven rock ...
- Jason Pettigrew
Oct 20, 2023 · Shock rock is rock’n'roll at its most gleefully demented, a place where monsters run free and sometimes play guitars, where topless women blow up cars, mutant ghouls chomp on raw meat, hapless audience members are fed to hungry space-maggots, and dope-smacked singers roll around in broken glass.
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Sep 7, 2024 · Alice Cooper's blend of hard rock (and occasional ballads) with horror-inspired theatrics influenced countless artists and solidified his legacy in shock rock. Still, other chickens are in that coop, like the aforementioned Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.
