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.

Album Review: Type O Negative – Slow, Deep and Hard

Type O Negative’s debut was released in 1991 and it’s one freaky piece of work.  It’s a lot more speed metal than their later, more goth albums.  There are only seven, albeit lengthy tracks on the album.  Apart from one minute of silence (entitled The Misinterpretation of Silence and Its Disastrous Consequences), the other six tracks are long, multi-part tracks featuring different ‘movements’.  Of the non-bowel variety.  But all the tracks have one thing on their mind: death.  Of another, to be precise.  If there is a more bitter, bloodthirsty, threatening album out there I’ve yet to hear it.

Opening track Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty of Infidelity is a twelve minute epic.  It starts as speed-metal before becoming a slow grind, all female backing vocals before Peter Steele emits a blood-curdling howl over the murkiest, sludgiest riffs imaginable.  After this, it resolves into the bitterest, catchy, driving riff song with an absolutely venomous chorus.  Throw in a church organ later plus Steele bawling “you, you make me hate myself!” and you’ve got yourself a song that’s so over the top it’d have Meat Loaf running for cover.

Some eerie clanking introduces Der Untermensch with band belting out lines such as “you’re a waste of life!”, while horrific drilling noises introduce Xero Tolerance as Steele roars “I’ll kill you tonight!” over pounding riffs, drums and church organ, Steele bellowing promises like “oh you’re dead now…”

Prelude to Agony is another twelve minute track, featuring stentorian vocals, dead slow riffs, drills, clanking bells, eerie chanting and a chopping axe.  Glass Walls of Limbo is more atmospheric, featuring what sounds like the condemned slow-marching towards Hades and some ghoulish chanting.

The album finishes with Gravitational Constant, which is a long but fairly conventional rocker, apart from yet more disturbing chanting.  You have to assume their tongues were in their cheeks while making this.  Otherwise…

Album Review: Type O Negative – World Coming Down

1999’s World Coming Down sees Peter Steele and co in more serious mode than usual ie., fewer annoying joke songs, though we do start with the sound of a skipping CD (Skip It) for 11 seconds before first track White Slavery opens with portentous organ before Kenny Hickey’s achingly slow Black Sabbathy riffs drag their way into the song, ushering in Steele’s doomy vocals.  In common with many other tracks here, it’s a slow, anthemic track, taking its time (eight minutes) to unfold.

There are three thematic short interludes here, Sinus, Liver and Lung, featuring heartbeats, heavy breathing, and agonized screams, designed to disturb.  Sticking to the ‘songs’, Everyone I Love Is Dead starts with semi-acoustic chords before Steele yells “goddammit”, ushering in the heavy, sludgy riffs over a delightfully dark melody.

It’s the melodies which are the key as to why this band works so well.  The moody Creepy Green Light is another fine example of this, yet again starting slowly, over a lone bassline this time before the sledgehammer metal riffs enter.  After an abrasive, growling opening, Everything Dies is almost goth power-ballad, while Pyretta Blaze has the poppiest chorus on the album.

A trademark of Type O Negative is the unexpected cover.  This time it’s the turn of the Beatles to get their unique treatment, and here they turn Day Tripper, If I Needed Someone and I Want You (She’s So Heavy) into their trademark black holes.  Day Tripper in particular works surprisingly well.

Type O Negative have slowed right down on this album, only the Beatles medley is beyond crawl pace.  Despite this, the album is saved from dullness by some fine melodies on another strong effort from this band.

Album Review: Type O Negative – October Rust

This was American Goths Type O Negative’s fourth album, released in 1996. Irritatingly, it’s bookended by some short skippable tracks, opening with static before a brief message thanking the listener for purchase, similarly at the end of the album. You won’t want to hear them again.

It’s not until track 3 that the band kicks properly into gear with Love You To Death, Josh Silver’s creepy keyboard intro darkening the atmosphere for Peter Steele’s sub-Eldritch doom-laden vocals before Kenny Hickey’s huge guitars kick in. This wide-screen, anthemic track sets the tone for the album, think Mission/Sisters of Mercy with slightly more metal guitars and a latent Gary Numan influence (melodically).

The tracks in general are slow, brooding epics, with catchy choruses, though many are quite lengthy such as the acoustic Die With Me and the keyboard-led Burnt Flowers Fallen. Steele's vocals are standard issue goth, though his lower register sounds unintentionally hilarious on Be My Druidess, singing “I’ll do anything to make you come” in a voice so deep and portentous it’s almost goth parody.

There are uptempo tracks also: My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend is a hammer-horror style rocker about a threesome with a driving beat, while they also do a pretty good version of Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl, in a kind of a Bauhaus vein.

The album is possibly overlong making it difficult to sustain the ominous mood and atmosphere but most of the tracks work very well.