Type O Negative
Slow, Deep And Hard

THE REVIEW

“Do you believe in forever? I don’t even believe in tomorrow…”

Try to imagine a man almost two meters tall, with a bodybuilder's physique, a killer's expression, pervaded by dark (in every sense) psychological problems, suicidal tendencies, and sexual perversions.
Place this individual at the microphone and surround him with a few worthy companions, who, while he screams like someone possessed, ravage with music based on Heavy Metal and drawing numerous cues from Industrial and the darkest Gothic.
Now you have a vague idea of what the Type O Negative were able to do in 1991 with their first work: "Slow, Deep And Hard.” It is a daunting task to find, in the hard musical landscape, another album containing so much anger, misanthropy, nihilism, savagery, and indistinct sex.

The singer Peter Steele manages to masterfully interpret all this alienation, which is nothing more than a plunge into the putrid psychological world of a madman, who observes, from his sick eyes, all the filth that surrounds him, and he feels it, lives it, screams it.

The album is divided into seven very long pieces, characterized by a meticulous attention to suggestion and instrumental interludes that even use the organ, to give a certain sense of sacredness to what is merely blasphemous.
The initial intro doesn’t deceive with the epic fury of “Unsuccessfully Copying With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity” which launches into Metal steeped with violence surmounted by the cavernous and bloody voice of the singer, then gives way to a slow, clear yet still dark melody where the sighs of orgasm are clearly heard; then it resumes with the initial destructive charge and closes with an unusual elegance devoted to electronics.
The second track, “Der Untermensch,” is an absurd combo of thrash, beats, roars, and heavy distortions. This leads to the third stage of moral degeneration with “Xero Tolerance” which, beyond its explicit racist content, is another immersion in a bath of hardcore and blood, where Steele prophesizes murder and death, helped by an organ interlude that intones a sort of funeral.
It also seems that the group leader doesn’t have a particular sympathy for the fairer sex; in fact, “Prelude To Agony,” an invective against sentimental love, is expressed in a realistic and hallucinatory rape with the sound of a pneumatic drill, complete with the victim’s tormented screams and religious choirs (more aimed at the Church of Satan than the Church of God) that make sexual violence a sacrament.
Lastly, there remain the gloomy infernal desolation of “Glass Walls Of A Limbo” and “Gravitational Constant,” a final appeal against life and human existence.

“Slow, Deep And Hard,” after all these years, still retains the cocktail of absolute depravations it carries, making it a unique work in its genre. Not even the same band in their subsequent works could reproduce the same extreme perdition here so clear.