Type O Negative

For years I lived under the conviction that "heavy metal" didn't have much to say. God, I didn't mind Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden and the rest of that lot, but then I gradually realized that, deep down, there was no room in my heart for "heavy metal". But, as so often happens, I'd overlooked one small detail... Or rather: I hadn't reckoned with the band of Peter Steele, a former New York cop with a "passion" for sexual deviance, mental shortcuts, and the most brutal, disjointed strain of heavy metal. At first I was thrown: "Hold on," I thought, "this man is glorifying hatred, violence, misogyny... He's insane!" Nothing could be further from the truth. This man is simply a realist; or better still, a "hyperrealist".

This man, to tell the truth, is a genius. Because only a genius could pour such torrents of irony over such dangerous subject matter. The trouble is figuring out where the irony ends and his actual issues begin. Hard to say for certain. Not that I much care, if I'm honest. The one certainty is that "Slow, Deep And Hard" is a masterpiece. Perhaps "the" masterpiece of heavy metal as a whole.

Now, before bringing Type O Negative to life, Steele had cut his teeth in the ferocious Carnivore, whose "Retaliation" at least deserves careful listening, thanks to its hallucinatory blend of doom, progressive, hardcore and gothic. Hearing it is practically mandatory if you want to properly understand how a record like "Slow, Deep And Hard" came to be. Carnivore lasted a short time, a very short time. Two albums is all they left behind.

Steele went back to haunting the seedy underbelly of his native New York, gripped by deep depression. But he hadn't forgotten music. Type O Negative, in fact, are proof of an inexhaustible passion. But something needed to change. First of all, by bringing in a keyboardist, one Josh Silver, who happened to be Jewish (just enough to silence the gossips about Steele's supposed anti-Semitism...). Then with a reworking - which was also, and above all, a reappraisal - of that genre-blending approach, through cleaner, less scattershot songwriting; and then, with the addition of "industrial" elements woven into the music, which never hurt anyone. And, to top it off, no more gratuitous violence or small-town-butcher posturing. Backing it all up with a complete, extraordinary, untouchable work: that was Steele's new watchword.

And the proof duly arrived, and it was anything but easy listening - at least for metal orthodoxy. "Slow, Deep And Hard" is split into 7 tracks, one of which, "The Misinterpretation Of Silence And Its Disastrous Consequences", serves as a brief interlude (1'04") between the penultimate and final tracks. Another "eccentric" piece is "Glass Walls Of Limbo (Dance Mix)", a black mass of the most impenetrable, abyssal kind. A tangle of otherworldly choirs, spectral landscapes, sinners' laments and unending sorrow.

The remaining 5 tracks, meanwhile, make up one of the most savage, violent, unhinged and uncompromising moments in rock. This is where I rediscovered the faith I'd once lost. Nothing but deep respect and endless awe. Especially for that bass sound: an infernal, terrifying sound, like a ripple of boiling anguish across the skin. Without a doubt: Peter Steele's signature "sound".

The opening builds, hissing. The imperious explosion of "Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity" is a devastating blow, a punch in the gut, a spit in the face... ("Trust and you will be trusted says the liar to the fool..." (...) "Do you believe in forever? I don't even believe in tomorrow..."). The progression is unmatched. Steele displays a very, very dangerous kind of indignation. And we're only at the beginning. Just enough time for a perverse interlude of acoustic guitar and lascivious vocals, and then that explosive initial charge returns, a prelude to the incredible keyboard melody of "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else" (worth remembering that, being split into several parts, these tracks are essentially full-blown "suites"); a melody carried along dizzying lines with a strong "progressive" imprint. "Der Untermensch" (the title says it all, doesn't it?) is THE Type O Negative track: distorted bass intro, mechanical beats, lightning-fast thrash metal, pauses, explosions, and then that unmatched second half that unloads hatred upon hatred deep in the gut, venting boundless bitterness, torment and resentment. Heavy metal at its most extreme, certainly. But we're still, all things considered, in "orthodox" territory. A further step forward comes with the following "Xero Tolerance", which assembles a speed-metal intro, an organ interlude reminiscent of Bach, sounds of foaming waves, and a frenzied slam-dance-paced gallop, complete with murderous threats from Steele... A sort of monstrous collage of vile, twisted images, embellished in the finale by a classical-sounding guitar.

"Prelude To Agony" once again emerges from the darkness, mingled with Steele's restless sighs. The band's "theatricality" reaches its undisputed peak across these 12 minutes. Themes? Always the same ones: love, death, misogyny. Crushing tribal drums and otherworldly choirs; melodic balances dissolving, tormented stillness reeking of rotten slowcore; apocalyptic tolling of funeral bells. "Jackhammerape" sets things back on the straight (!) and narrow, more hallucinated speed metal, before the final catastrophe, which is the catastrophe of the psyche, the chaos that clouds the mind and leads to murder, to the most abject and squalid sexual violence.

What remains is "Gravitational Constant: G="6.67x10-8cm3gm-1sec-2"" (sic!), Steele's point of no return, here intent on baring his problems (or supposed problems...): "I've got no more reason to live and I've got no more love to give...". The track's structure is by now the "classically unorthodox" kind: layer upon layer of emotions finding their sonic counterparts in the most disparate forms. The most important sections of the whole track are "Acceleration: due to gravity" (where the "sound" seems to plunge into a bottomless vortex of psychic reverberations) and "Requiem for a soulless man" (where the singer's anguish is all too tangible, accompanied toward its final resolution - "suicide is self expression" - in an atmosphere still reminiscent of certain "religious" tropes so dear to gothic music).

What lies behind this record is explained in the dedicated Type O Negative feature. Today, more than ever, I remain convinced that this is the high-water mark of metal (past and present). Or at least, that's the view of someone who never loved anything about metal, until that opening hiss revealed to him the unresolved mystery of Peter Steele. So, to the genre's fundamentalists I leave their opinions. I'll keep mine.

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13/11/2006