Saturday, January 12, 2013

Album Review: Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Type O Negative released their sixth album in 2003, four years after its predecessor. It's a long, sprawling album. After a brief intro (Thir13teen), I Don't Wanna Be Me bursts out of the traps. It's faster than anything on their previous album World Coming Down, roaring along in a thrillingly thrash-goth manner, Peter Steele providing a wonderfully brutal vocal. I Like Goils and a cover of Angry Inch barrel along in a similar fashion.

Less Than Zero is on more familiar ground. It's the first of many tracks to channel the 80s, with a bubble goth Gary Numan-style verse coupled with great big riffs on the chorus, with a tabla thrown in for kicks. Todd's Ship Gods is in a similar vein, while (We Were) Electrocute goes one step further, spelling it out (musically) and ending up as pastiche. But just when you think you've the latter song nailed, it, like many tracks here, confounds you by morphing into something else entirely. On this occasion Electrocute ends up as one of Type O Negative's trademark black holes.

The band pretty much try every style of song in their repertoire on his album. Unfortunately they try and pack all this into one song ...A Dish Best Served Coldly, and it ends up as a bloated mess. The very Black Sabbath-y title track is an improvement, with a strong chorus, but the album never really regains its momentum.

Nettie sounds like a dark, brooding leftover from World Coming Down crossed with Jim Steinman-era Sisters of Mercy (a GOOD thing), and Anesthesia is a slow, heavy goth rocker. However at 15 tracks over 74 minutes, the overall effect is overwhelming. Much less coherent than World Coming Down, this album can at times be a slog to get through.

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