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.

Estrogenocide - Balls

Riff mark: yep

Baptism by fire…about a decade back I reviewed for a fairly well-known metal site and this was the first album sent to me, attached with an awfully-sad promo citing influences such as Depeche Mode and Napalm Death. If the deceptive, Violator-like rose on that cover discharges fragrance of either band, email me coupons for a fresher set of ears. Better yet, email me anything; I’ll take heavy sedatives delivered to my doorstep, expedited. It’s remarkable that someone remembered this CD and posted it on Youtube (40 hits on this vid so far!), the experience of its uprooting not unlike opening a sarcophagus rank with computer dust inhalants. No guitar, no bass, no acoustic drums. It’s all synth, all C Major, all 3-note songs, all drum machines, all whisper talk of not-so-sweet nothings such as “cunt kicking” and “cutting nipples off”. Porno grind made with bad keyboards and giggles. I’m not even explaining it correctly and I don’t care. Really the bottommost punctuation in the one-dimensional plane of minimalism, proving that anyone can make their own damn music, but most people will like you less for it.

Alien Fucker - The First Rape In Space (Full Album)

Riff mark: Dat Intro Tho


I quit forever. 

Acid Bath - Paegan Love Song

Riff mark: oh man just get a load of it all at the beginning

Best of luck finding another band anywhere who can debut two 70-minute (Note: secret track for this one bumps it up roughly 17 minutes) records back-to-back with such poise, perfection, and poetry. Paegan Terrorism Tactics is the exact follow-up you feared would ruin When the Kite String Pops yet didn’t. Admittedly, it’s less-recklessly structured, seeming to know when to hush and lull rather than thrash and seize. Dax, the serpent king, with his skin-bound bible of tongue-twisted murder gospels, gleams in sheen black velvety funeral pipes more than the previous record, crooning cleanly because it is required to disarm you. For all my snake skin, he’s the best front man you’ve never heard. Fingers aren’t pressed too hard to lips for headbangers like opener Paegan Love Song (a lyricist’s wet-dream) and New Corpse, but the honest-to-rot-ness beauts just bloom from ugly like Graveflower, this album’s version of Scream of the Butterfly, a beating, deliberate, scarring box-cutter, six minutes of funeral hurt. New Death Sensation and Dead Girl just leave a few instruments behind at the wake and play whatever is found at the casket to get by, drifting, drowning, and softly waving goodbye to a town and home state that seems to loudly parade one’s passing with brass. Then a car accident (not drugs, not a wife) happened and the band split. So it goes: two forgotten studio relics and a pile of demos and bootlegs. Super-bizarre album painting by Dr. Jack.

Update 4/3: Of all the bands posted on our blog this is the first one whose videos are removed from Youtube due to copyright laws. So, have a bootlegged live rendition instead.