10 Greatest Masked Bands In Rock History

10. The Residents

When it comes to masked bands in rock music, you can trace pretty much everything back to The Residents.

The band have been around since the mid-1960s, but they gained their most famous headwear on their 1979 record Eskimo.

You could call it... eye-catching... because they wore big eyes on their head... do you get it?

The Residents' unique aesthetic quickly caught on and they became known as "the giant eyeball guys" almost immediately. This bizarre appearance fit perfectly with their musical output, which was extremely avant-garde.

The band's philosophy is that their work should do the talking for them, so the identities of its members is kept under lock and key.

The only person to ever reveal themselves as part of the group was Hardy Fox, one of its founders. He outed himself as a Resident in 2017, only to pass away the following year.

They won't be everyone's cup of tea, but The Residents' impact on music cannot be overstated. They took the idea of performance art to a whole new level and created an iconography that is still highly memorable to this very day.

You'll never look at an eye the same way ever again.