4B —Thursday, October 26, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COURTESY OF NAOMI WAKU

One of many elaborate looks at the hands of Naomi Waku, better known online as ‘NamGlam’

Artist Naomi Waku puts 
the glamor in Halloween

NamGlam intersects the elaborate & the glamorous in her tutorials

In the age of lip kits, contour 

and ever-thickening eyebrows, 
it seems that everyone wants to 
be a makeup mogul. Instagram 
and YouTube have made it so 
anyone can throw their looks 
or tutorials to the masses, 
gaining online prestige and 
setting the bar for upcoming 
trends. But succeeding in the 
makeup world is easier said 
than done.

Born and raised in Belgium, 

24-year-old Naomi Waku is 
one such success 
story; a success 
story 
that 
has 

taken 
on 
the 

unconventional. 
As NamGlam on 
Instagram, Waku 
creates theatrical, 
transformative 
looks. 
She 
has 

made 
herself 

into 
an 
alien 

fortune teller, an 
avatar 
princess, 

a glam red devil 
and 
a 
wicked 

witch; all using 
makeup. In just 
over a year, Waku 
has 
amassed 

52 
thousand 

Instagram 
followers and has 
recently 
started 

posting tutorials 
to YouTube. 

“Ever since I 

can 
remember 

I 
always 
loved 

fashion 
and 

beauty. 
In 
my 

teenage 
years, 

I 
came 
across 

beauty channels 
on Youtube and I instantly 
fell in love,” Waku wrote in 
an email interview with The 
Daily. “My dream was to one 
day have my own space where I 
could share my work with other 
makeup lovers like myself. 
Which is why I started my own 
makeup page on Instagram and 
the rest is history.”

Now that Waku has carved 

this space out for herself, 
she has found overwhelming 
support for her work.

“It’s great and overwhelming 

at the same time,” Waku wrote 
of her followers. “I feel very 
grateful to have so many people 
supporting me and giving me 
love. It really keeps me going.” 

Waku does her best to keep 

in touch with her followers and 
foster a dynamic community, 
acting more as a confidant 
and peer than an untouchable 

expert.

“I couldn’t ask for better, 

my followers give me a lot of 
love and support which really 
motivates me to push myself 
more,” Waku wrote. “I love to 
interact with them through 
private messages, answering 
questions 
they 
have, 
give 

them advice, etc. It’s really 
important for me to create a 
strong and durable relationship 
with them.”

This strong community is 

due in part to Waku’s unique 
looks. Instead of opting for 
convention and the every-day, 
Waku’s looks are fantastical 

and 
otherworldly. 
Covering 

her 
face 
with 
colors 
and 

gems, Waku makes Halloween 
makeup glamorous. Her work 
is both beautiful and precise; 
creating 
these 
looks 
using 

makeup techniques such as 
contouring and shading, but 
ending up with something 
entirely other.

“I always feel the need to 

challenge myself when I do 
makeup,” Waku wrote. “I’m 
always looking to improve my 
craft. It’s a way for me step out 
of my comfort zone, learn new 
techniques and overall improve 
my skills and artistry.”

For Waku, makeup isn’t just 

about the end result; there is 
much to be said for the process.

“I’m 
quite 
a 
technical 

person. What I love about 
makeup is trying out new 
techniques or improving my 

own,” Waku wrote. “This way I 
never get bored because I never 
stop learning. I also love to play 
with colors, especially vibrant 
ones, it puts me in great mood 
especially on days where I 
don’t feel at my best.”

But 
Waku 
still 
enjoys 

appreciating the final result 
of her work, the culmination 
of all her research, planning 
and execution. She finds that 
intricate looks, in comparison 
to more ready-to-wear designs, 
are more gratifying.

“I love doing creative and 

intricate looks,” Waku wrote. 
“These kind of looks are the 

most 
time 

consuming 
however 
the 

end 
result 

are 
the 
best 

especially 
when you put 
in the time and 
effort it really 
makes 
the 

difference.”

Like 
many 

other 
artists, 

Waku 
turns 

to other forms 
of 
art 
for 

inspiration 
when planning 
her 
next 

project. 
She 

even 
has 

aspirations 
of 
taking 
on 

other 
artful 

ventures, 
namely music.

“I collect a 

lot of pictures 
that I use for 
inspiration,” 
Waku 
wrote. 

“Some are from 
a 
magazine, 

music 
video 

or other makeup artists that 
inspire me. It really depends 
on what I’m creating ... I 
listen to a lot of music and I 
secretly would love to make 
some as well. This is definitely 
something I have in mind for 
the longest time.”

For Waku, her passions are 

first and foremost fueled by a 
need for self-expression. It is 
this unabashed representation 
of the self in combination with 
sheer talent that has garnered 
Waku such a following. She 
has taken makeup — something 
that 
is 
already 
inherently 

beautiful — and made it art.

“(Makeup) requires work, 

skills, time and effort,” Waku 
wrote. “But above all makeup 
represent a way to express 
myself in a artistic and creative 
way and this is everything to 
me.”

CARLY SNIDER
Senior Arts Editor

COURTESY OF NAOMI WAKU

ARTIST
PROFILE

IN

 VERTIGO RECORDS

Famed heavy metal band Black Sabbath
Darkness and the Occult: 
A brief history of Doom
A musical manifestation of all things spooky and satanic

Inspired by gruesome death, 

darkness and the occult, Doom 
Metal has become the ultimate 
projection of fear in music. 
The legendary genre rose from 
the ground during 1970 in the 
form of Black Sabbath — the 
high priests of heavy metal, 
the creators of doom. The band 
gave the world an introduction 
to chunky basslines and sleazy 
guitar riffs all played in a slower 
tempo, drenched in haunting 
lyrics to create an inescapable 
eeriness that floods the ears.

Black 
Sabbath 
started 
it 

all after being released in 
the United Kingdom on the 
most appropriate date: Friday 
13, 
1970. 
Frontman 
Ozzy 

Osbourne’s voice floats over the 
slow, dense music and it replaces 
gravity, pushing and pulling 
the body in every direction 
with each word escaping his 
mouth. “Visions cupped within 
a flower / Deadly petals with 
strange 
powers,” 
Osbourne 

sings in “Behind the Wall of 
Sleep.” The song is influenced 
by the common practice in 
Wicca and other cultures of 
using plants to enhance the 
physical and mental states of a 
person and their environments, 
but its demonized to depict a 
resurrection of sorts.

Though Black Sabbath has 

occult influence, they were more 
inspired by the harsh mass of 
death that surrounded Vietnam, 
and they focused on intense 
lyrical content that included 
different renditions of the end 
of the world, war and drug 
addiction. In the song “Hand of 
Doom,” Osbourne sings, “First 
it was the bomb / Vietnam 
napalm / Disillusioning / You 
push the needle in,” describing 
the timeline from soldier to 
drug addict as an effect of PTSD 
in four short lines.

Black 
Sabbath’s 
honest 

representation of the hells on 
Earth and their pioneering 
instrumentals created a recipe 
to 
induce 
terror 
through 

sound, but doom after 1970 
began honing in on the use 

of surrealism in their lyrical 
content. The brutal reality of 
death and horrors in history 
were still present in doom, but 
there was a new portrayal of a 
more monster-esque type of 
darkness. Doom was taking a 
break from the capitalist, war-
hungry cesspool Earth, and 
stepping into the eccentric 
wormhole of nightmares. 

Pentagram executed the new 

strategy effortlessly in their 
1985 
self-titled 
record 
that 

brings fear to life through a more 
occult lens. Some of the album 
is sung from the perspective of 
a supernatural force instead of a 
human observer. In “Sinister,” 
frontman Bobby Liebling sings, 
“I am the priest of Hell make 
a slave of you,” in which the 
narrator becomes Satan.

Liebling manifests as another 

gruesome 
identity 
in 
“The 

Ghoul,” where he sings, “I’ve 
come to desecrate your bones / 
As maggots crawl amongst your 
flesh / You’re soon to meet the 
truth of death.” Its guitar riffs 
ooze desecrated sounds that 
pull the victim in closer to the 
song, while the drums replace 
their heartbeat and shake their 
lungs.

Pentagram’s ability to lace 

their 
murky 
instrumentals 

with gorey lyrics made doom 
more imaginative and creepy. 
It gave way to more varied 
interpretation and odd content 
that was cultivated in the genre 
during the ’90s.

During that time, Electric 

Wizard became the Doom Metal 
oddity composed of cultural 
fascinations 
from 
European 

porn to Detroit garage rock. 
They pulled inspiration from 
the dark masters before them 
and integrated it with other 
horrific material from ’60s and 

’70s gore films and the terror 
tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Their 
album titles reflect some of 
their influences, with names 
like Black Masses, Time to Die, 
Dopethrone 
and 
Witchcult 

Today.

Witchcult 
Today 
sounds 

like the epitome of doom. It 
starts with the sound of crying 
winds and is rancid with chiller 
influences. The second song, 
“Dunwich” is a panicked and 
blackened 
interpretation 
of 

Lovecraft’s 
“The 
Dunwich 

Horror,” a short story about 
horrific events that occur in the 
fictional Dunwich, New England 
surrounded by hills and full of 
silence, with a past of witch-
blood and Satan-Worship. Liz 
Buckingham’s heavy guitar riffs 
and Jus Oborn’s rough, scratchy 
voice envelope the listener into 
a mystic environment, into their 
own personal Dunwich.

Electric Wizard then moves 

from a surreal song inspired by 
a fictional world into something 
inspired by events in history in 
“Torquemada 71,” which calls 
attention to the Spanish friar, 
Tomas de Torquemada, who 
was responsible for the burning 
of 2,000 heretics and for the 
torture and death of many 
more. Oborn’s voice singing, 
“Come now and torture me” 
becomes soaked in heavy guitar 
fuzz and slashy distortion. It 
sounds torturous and drawn 
out, like the dismemberment of 
a body part.

Electric Wizard is a doom 

curated from the disgusting 
truth 
in 
bands 
like 
Black 

Sabbath, 
and 
their 
surreal 

counterparts like Pentagram. 
It melts each influence together 
into a sound of dripping black 
tar from the top of a succubus 
leading to the void. Other 
present doom bands that level 
with Electric Wizard are Sleep 
and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, 
who project doom with their 
own blackened style. They keep 
doom thriving after 47 years of 
existing. It remains to be one of 
the most prominent sub-genres 
of metal because of its growing 
sludge sound and consistent 
themes of death, darkness and 
the occult.

SELENA AGUILERA

Daily Arts Writer

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It melts each 

influence together 

into a sound of 

dripping black tar

