Type o Negative
World Coming Down

THE REVIEW

Peter Steel is a misanthrope, Peter Steel is well-endowed (see to believe his Playgirl spread that led numerous American girls to "kill themselves with pleasure"), Peter Steel is a charmer, Peter Steel is a damn New Yorker, Peter Steel is a bit dark, Peter Steel is an excellent musician and composer. The Type O Negative have achieved success and appreciation precisely thanks to their leader Peter Steel, not only because of the music offered, but also for the image and cultural content he brought with him. Peter is indeed the mind and soul of Type; the other band members serve only as a backdrop! Type O Negative is a group that achieved great success in the first half of the '90s, especially with albums like "Bloody Kisses" and "October Rust," works that have spawned a myriad of imitators and set the trend for the dark and brooding persona. These works have also brought many chicks closer to more extreme music like metal, gothic, and similar genres!

A group like Type has always had an important characteristic, which is the great irony of the lyrics, their way of addressing painful themes from an ironic standpoint and a poking fun perspective, from a misanthropic but not detached standpoint! Because, excuse me, a group that releases songs with a title like "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" or releases a "live" record with only one album to their credit—even though it’s not a live album, it's a studio work that uses the same tracks as the debut, adds screams and crowd noises, and titles the whole thing "The Origin of the Feces"—well, can you take a group like this seriously? Not to mention the lyrics of "Christian Woman," absolutely irreverent towards Christian morality with lyrics like "Do you want to suffer eternally or internally? (with 'internally' there is a sexual reference)" where Christ becomes a body that the Christian woman carnally desires, and the "body of Christ" represented by the host becomes the object of sexual desire of the Christian woman "feel her god, inside of her." I talked about these lyrics just to demonstrate their irreverent and ironic spirit, which few bands can truly claim to possess.

But with the CD I'm reviewing, their fourth album "World Coming Down," something changes! Peter Steel's lyrics are no longer ironic but truly filled with suffering and depression, and the music reflects all of that. This situation is justified by everything that happened in Peter's real life in the meantime. As indicated by the cover title, "the world is coming down," but this world is the singer's personal world, as he experienced numerous family losses during that period! Type O Negative has been a band that (as Steel himself has always stated) mixed Beatles and Black Sabbath in cheerful heresy, all tamed by quasi-gothic sounds. Now there are no more traces of the Beatles' sunny melodies, and the album is mostly Sabbath-like, almost doom in conception, with non-musical interludes where you hear a guy snorting cocaine, one committing suicide, etc. (missing those typically comedic interludes, like in the album "October Rust," where they declared the liberation of a mythical Republic of Vinnland). The lyrics talk about death and despair, and it couldn't be otherwise! In the first track of the album titled "White Slavery," Steel declares: "I've lost myself again, it's a nightmare, but it's clear. It will end, but when?"

From this perspective, it's useless to do a track by track. Type uses the usual guitars now known as "buzz-saw," but everything in a context where the songs slow down. You could almost talk about a single track!!! There are more carefree episodes like "Who Will Save the Same," where irony and the old Type sound return at times, or "Day Tripper," which is a medley of various Beatles tracks. Also noteworthy is the title track, perhaps the best track on the album, where keyboards play an important role, giving atmosphere and depth to the piece, constructing haunting and desperate melodies, all with a background of Gregorian chants! So, I recommend this record; for me, it’s a small masterpiece, probably the most sincere and least self-celebratory work of Type, although for those who want to get to know this group, I would suggest starting with the less despairing and more ironic "Bloody Kisses."