The tall singer and the o-neg's

Good... Well.. From progressive black metal we now turn a page onto what was called Goth metal, with the singer who actually had the fangs to give it all a gothic, vampiric feel... The band I'm talking about is of course Type O Negative, and in special one of my all time favorite singers, Peter Steele.

I first got to know Type O Negative through a remix version of one of their songs Blood & Fire, which was on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. This version is called the Out Of The Ashes Mix. I loved Peter Steele's voice so I dug in a little further.

Type O Negative started out in a band I haven't heard anything from unfortunately, called Northern Lights, to later change the name to Fallout. They played classic rock covers at first but then changed their style to original gothic-style rock. After several band members left Peter Steele founded thrash metal band Carnivore, but... This band went on hiatus after the second album got released.

The band members that joined later led to another name change to Repulsion, and Sub-Zero, but after they found that name had already been taken, they decided to call the band Type O Negative after the "o" negative tattoo's for subzero which they already had.


To be honest their first album I didn't think to be all that spectacular. What I did like was the Black Sabbath cover of Paranoid on Origin Of The Feces. Steele made this sound darker than Ozzy ever could.


And then... On to bigger and better things... The albums Bloody Kisses and October Rust came which contained the songs I truly love of Type O Negative. These songs are for Bloody Kisses "Blood & Fire", "Christian Woman" and "Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)", "Suspended In Dusk".

October Rust.... "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend", "Love You To Death"Cinnamon Girl, Green Man, Wolf Moon, "Red Water (Christmas Mourning)", "Die With Me" and "Haunted".

In World Coming Down there were of course the songs "All Hallows Eve", "White Slavery", "Everything Dies", "Creepy Green Light" which made it to my all time favorites. Of the Life Is Killing Me album I only know "I Don't Wanna Be Me" and of the album Dead Again the songs "Tripping a Blind Man", "September Sun", "Halloween in Heaven" ...

Then.... on April 14th, 2010, came the news we didn't expect to hear...

" It is with great sadness that we inform you that Type O Negative front man, bassist, and our band mate, Peter Steele passed away last night of what appears to be heart failure. Ironically Peter had been enjoying a long period of sobriety and improved health and was imminently due to begin writing and recording new music for our follow up to "Dead Again" released in 2007.

The official cause of death has yet to be determined pending autopsy results. The funeral services will be private and memorial services will be announced at a future date. We’d like to share our thoughts and those of Peter’s family below. We are truly saddened to lose our friend and appreciate the tremendous outpouring today from around the world.
Sincerely,
Josh, Kenny and Johnny "

No matter what, Peter Steele's voice is still wonderful and his persona, known for his vampiric affect, towering stature of 6'8" (203 cm) tall, which gave him a famously menacing stage appearance, rich bass-baritone vocals, and a dark, often self-deprecating sense of humor will be missed.

According to Wikipedia, in a November 2010 interview with Rock Hard magazine, Johnny Kelly and Kenny Hickey confirmed that following Steele's death, Type O Negative had definitely split-up.

On a recent album, Lacuna Coil made a song called My Spirit, which is dedicated to Peter Steele, with a similar bass line as Peter Steele's sound, because they were fans of the band. Vocalist Ferro said, “He was a big friend of ours because we toured together and have been friends for many years and the night we knew he’d died, Marco (bass player) wrote all the music that night, so it was a very spontaneous tribute to our friend.”

Should you want to buy Type O Negative you can find their music everywhere online, including Large.nl and Amazon.