Type O Negative (part 5 of 8) - Pyretta Blaze

Back in December I reviewed 4 Type O Negative albums in the span of a week, for no good reason other than they're my favorite metal band. I wanted to do the remaining studio releases (and the Least Worst of, which is half a studio in heart) but other albums kept jumping at me, so I've been dragging my heels on it. With tomorrow being the 5-year anniversary of Petrus T. Steele's death...well. Here goes. Anyhoo, I promise to space my adoration for this remarkable group in a less smothering, aggravating bombardment.


Riff mark: 5:32

With the unenviable burden of following two of the most perfect discharges of Herculean prominence too heavy a yoke, Type O Negative succumb to name, pathos, and creative exhaustion yet STILL manage another fantastic album, this linear stretch of music just dreary enough for black umbrellas on sunny days. Everything’s out and prying open the coffin door at this point, Steele bending from departed family, general anxiety, and the ingested toxins under the guise of healing salves, fingers plucking bass strings as afterthoughts playing the deconstruction of his psyche. Or is some percentage of said darkness an act, a practical joke not unlike every album opener or Easter-egg subtlety that makes the gloomy ones gleam with the assurance of a slight wink? World Coming Down is genius in its interconnected contrasts of brutal hopelessness and single-flowered hope, the immediate bottom-ward Silver-lined keys of White Slavery groveling through the frosted lines of its inhaled title (the slowest song about cocaine EVER), then inflating buoyancy into a duo of some-tempo tunes with Everyone I Love is Dead and Who Will Save the Sane?. Well, the string won’t break, despite its manic-depressive urges for aural suicide, the title track being said arc (or piss break, 11 plodding minutes). Altogether it’s a sad, sad cave troll but hey, it’s all in good fun, albeit at the expense of those remaining spirits on board who continue, with a Beatles-like proclivity, to assemble albums of great goddamned music (speaking of which, inevitable Beatles medley here). And it’s all your fault. Sadly underrated by casuals.