For a band that was formed in 1989, I got seduced by the Gothic lustre of TYPE O NEGATIVITY relatively late, through their critically acclaimed 1996 album classic. It was already the band’s fourth studio album, and even though it became their biggest album in all aspects, they had already broken through with 1993’s “Bloody Kisses,” which had not resonated in the slightest with the adolescent prog-snob, me, at the time of its release. It certainly resonated with others, though. “Bloody Kisses” had been the most successful record released by the band’s label, Roadrunner, to that point. Hence, there was some additional pressure from the label, ushering the band to replicate the success of that endeavor with perhaps something similar. What the band eventually delivered to be released on August 20th, 1996, under the title “October Rust,” was something quite different, something more adventurous and ballsy – and the gamble did not merely pay off; it did so royally. On this album, the band’s Gothic side is brought front and center, inspired by bands such as THE CURE, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, and COCTEAU TWINS. The metal edge of the previous albums is dialed back a lot – hey, the album even features programmed drums! The story goes that the lush album opener, “Love You to Death,” was the first song written for this album, and I guess it must have set the tone for the writing sessions of the rest of the tracks, because the album is dripping with softly brushed Gothic romance. While the album cover may not be just as raunchy as “Bloody Kisses,” some of the songs definitely are, with the album’s monolithic classic, “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend,” and “Be My Druidess” being the steamiest examples of the lot. The rumor has it that this softer approach, Peter Steele‘s suggestive lyrics especially, stemmed from the band’s attempt to draw a stronger female fanbase, and while it certainly seems to have worked in the band’s favor, in retrospect, they also ended up crafting a monolithic pillar of the whole Gothic scene. Given the Zeitgeist of the time, what with grunge and metal being pushed to the side by hip-hop and skate punk in the US, this new sound for TYPE O NEGATIVE was something magnificently out of the ordinary. The venture to make sex the major selling point for the band accidentally popped out a timeless classic. Well, stranger things have happened…
The album kicks off with something like a troll track, as per the band’s old habit – that is, 40-something seconds of bad static, followed by a spoken intro that leads into the first proper song, that epochal Gothic-Romantic anthem mentioned above. Even though I’d already heard the meat-triangle-themed blockbuster single before getting my hands on this album and had found it a pretty decent song as well, THIS track was the song that finally made me realize why some people were going all bonkers about this band at the time. The song has it all: Baroque piano and violins, Steele‘s signature crooning, and a deliciously brooding atmosphere. If truth be told, “Love You To Death” is the best song the band ever wrote. Period. One YouTube comment about this song nailed it just perfectly: “Dear Death, if you give us back Peter Steele, we will give you every Kardashian, beiber, and your pick of politicians. Sincerely, every metalhead, ever.” This one song is almost too good for this album, because – let’s be frank, here – some of the songs resonate thick with the air of… well, strange. Okay, let’s start with the least subtle ode to carnal pleasures.
It is obviously “Be My Druidess.” I guess you could either take the lyrics as a cringe account of Steele‘s sexual kinks or a depiction of a pagan ritual. Then again, some of the band’s fans have said TYPE O NEGATIVE was always cringe, and it constituted a large part of what made them so damn awesome. I see no difference between this song and, say, Marvin Gaye‘s “Sexual Healing.” I wouldn’t hail either song as the artists’ best contributions to their respective genres, but to give credit where it’s due, these songs are far from the worst, too. I mean, time has treated both of these songs pretty well, unlike Serge Gainsbourg‘s famous “Je t’aime… moi non plus,” which sounds like a badly written skit from Saturday Night Live in this day and age.
The album’s lead single and biggest hit, “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend,” has no philosophical implications – it’s all about sex, a meat triangle, to be more precise. Lyrically, Steele is quite unsubtle about his sexual kink, but musically, the song is a bit more nuanced. The song is almost like a Gothic-rock homage to the psychedelic warlords, THE DOORS, what with the vintage organ and all. It was not the first TYPE O NEGATIVE song that I heard back in the day, but I guess it was the first one to make me think their music wasn’t all shit – as it happens, I also went through an intense fanboy phase concerning those dark psychedelic pioneers in the aftermath of Oliver Stone’s band biopic in the early 1990s. I reasoned that, if you paid homage to THE DOORS, even as subtly as this song, your band must have something interesting going on – and so, when I finally gave TYPE O NEGATIVE a chance, I realized they surely did, too!
Squeezed between one salacious ode to Pagan sex magic and one about Steele‘s kink for ménage à trois, songs such as “Green Man” and “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” seem to have become forgotten gems of sorts. At face value, “Green Man” sounds like a lush ode to nature, but I reckon, considering the Pagan references here and there on the album, it has a deeper meaning, something to do with Pagan lore. “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” is a tad more poignant affair about all the people that had passed away in Steele‘s life. Put this on the Christmas playlist at a family gathering, and you’re in for a jolly good time, I would reckon.
The joke tracks aside – like “The Glorious Liberation of the People’s Technocratic Republic of Vinnland by the Combined Forces of the United Territories of Europa,” which impersonates the national anthem of some made-up country for about a minute or so – the strangest track must be “Wolf Moon (including Zoanthropic Paranoia).” I mean, lyrically, at least, what with the concept of a werewolf feasting on menstrual blood. Still, it’s hard to consider this song merely as yet another joke track, because in all of its doom-laden splendor, the song slaps pretty hard! On the other hand, the lyrical theme is not nearly as weird as in some of those death-metal classics from the same era.
I would have dubbed the album a masterpiece by now, but it comes with a few more Gothic bangers. First, “In Praise of Bacchus” is a 7-minute epic of pure Gothic perfection. Then, some people have gone as far as to claim that TYPE O NEGATIVE nails the cover rendition of “Cinnamon Girl,” a vintage Neil Young hit, so well that it beats even the original. Finally, “Haunted” puts a poignant finishing touch on the selection, musing on the topic of nocturnal spirit lovers. So, yeah, the album is predominantly about sex and sadness, but it remains one of the most haunting takes on the subject matter to this day. Alas, it also remains the band’s last coherent and spectacular album. The thing is, during this period, drugs had also entered the picture more pronouncedly, which kicked off a downhill spiral for guitarist Kenny Hickey and Steele, the latter of whom already struggled with severe lifelong depression, stage fright, and bipolar disorder. It probably didn’t help that the album underperformed at retail. It sold over 500,000 copies in the US alone, achieving RIAA Gold certification, but as impressive as that would have been for some other band, it was still worse than the stats of “Bloody Kisses.” Hickey famously put it, “It didn’t matter we’d got a gold record, we still came off tour and had to go back to our day jobs.” In this light, it’s no wonder the following albums sounded remarkably bleaker and dipped deeper in darkness. When Steele died of heart failure in April 2010, some 3 years after releasing TYPE OF NEGATIVE’s swansong album, entitled almost prophetically “Dead Again,” it seemed but like a bad joke. So, the ultimate Goth frontman never got to see in full how the band’s seemingly unsuccessful album has become one of the most iconic Gothic-metal endeavors of all time, something by which other goth metal bands are judged.
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Tracklist
- Bad Ground
- Untitled (spoken word intro)
- Love You To Death
- Be My Druidess
- Green Man
- Red Water (Christmas Mourning)
- My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend
- Die With Me
- Burnt Flowers Fallen
- In Praise of Bacchus
- Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young cover)
- The Glorious Liberation of the People’s Technocratic Republic of Vinnland by the Combined Forces of the United Territories of Europa
- Wolf Moon (including Zoanthropic Paranoia)
- Haunted
- Untitled (spoken word outro)
Lineup
Peter Steele – lead vocals, bass
Kenny Hickey – guitars, backing vocals
Josh Silver – keyboards, backing vocals, drum programming
John Kelly – backing vocals
with guest:
Val Ium – vocals on track 10
Bensonhoist Lesbian Choir – choir vocals
Label
Roadrunner
