TYPE O NEGATIVE - Life Is Killing Me

A long-awaited return for Type O Negative, one of the most controversial and important bands of Nineties "heavy" rock. Four years have passed since the last album, "World Coming Down", which the band's undisputed leader, Peter Steele (vocals and bass), bluntly called "the worst album of our career" (though it seems he said this more because of bad personal memories tied to the making of that record than because of the music itself). "Life Is Killing Me", however, simply continues down the path of gradually dismantling the savage brutality that marked their early days, in favor of an ever-greater focus on melodic construction and painstaking work on sounds and arrangements.

The main blueprints are, as ever, always the same two: Black Sabbath on one side and the Beatles on the other. Contrary to what one might think, Peter Steele never made a secret of his love for the Beatles and of how much the Liverpool quartet had always been a major source of inspiration for him: on this album he even goes as far as quoting them outright, besides repeatedly using them as a model for the unpredictable pop detours that pop up in the middle of their white-hot "wall of sound". The violence of Kenny Hickey's guitar and John Kelly's drums is further tempered by the precise, inventive finishing touches of keyboardist Josh Silver, with a distinctly Eighties flavor.

The song format stays more or less the same throughout: long, sprawling tracks built on elegant but not especially incisive progressions, in which the guitar's apocalyptic tones sometimes take over ("Gimme That"), and the melodic side prevails at other times ("Electrocute"): but everything unfolds rather laboriously, never quite managing to draw the listener all the way in. It's a major limitation for the record and for Type O Negative's music, which even today works best not through long, slow, convoluted "prog-metal" digressions in the vein of Tool: the band's real strength still lies in those irresistible bursts of speed, broken up by Silver's electronic interludes, ridden by the voice of their charismatic frontman, branded with Kenny Hickey's riffs.

In short, the band's strength is felt in full force on a track like the irresistible, devastating "I Don't Wanna Be Me", which even closes with an "ambient" coda, leading into the referential "Less Than Zero", which, over a pounding guitar-and-drum workout, dishes out melodies lifted straight from the "Indian-tinged" Beatles of songs like "Norwegian Wood" and "Inner Light", only to then dissolve into a dramatic chorus. A bizarre, perhaps somewhat muddled track, but also one of their most original ever, proof that even when they're not at their very best, Type O Negative remain creatively a cut above the average recent metal band.

Even more bizarre is the pounding hardcore of "I Like Goils", potentially explosive but constantly held in check by Silver's electronic disturbances and by Steele's vocals, which rise into disorienting howls and pop backing chants. "Angry Inch" is another demonic slab of trash-metal, but one that doesn't show much conviction on the band's part. The remaining tracks are long, measured, consistently elegant, linear and catchy progressions: but the long-suite format that worked so well on their early records no longer has much reason to exist without the terrifying rage that once propped up and fueled those works. Today's Type O Negative are still capable of crafting flawless songs that never lose steam over their average 6-7 minute runtime, but they've lost the ability to wrap the listener in the dark folds of their aggression and despair.

Still, they prove capable of nailing a masterpiece like "Anesthesia", a track that finally drops the mask of excessive formal mannerism and launches into a genuine "gothic" apotheosis, an abyss of fear and rage worthy of the masterpieces on their second album, "Bloody Kisses".

Type O Negative inspire admiration with every release, because despite the passing years and trends, they stay true to their identity, to their own standard, even if by now it has almost entirely curdled into self-parody. This is precisely why "Life Is Killing Me" is an album that doesn't really go anywhere, too uninvolving to sustain its own length, saved only by immense class and sporadic flashes of brilliance.

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30/10/2006