staynegative@oocities.com.
Where does time go? That question has been asked since the very beginning of time itself. As man evolved and physicists, metaphysicists and philosophers were born and sought out this answer, they have only managed to produce long titles for themselves, scratching their heads in offices like primitive man did in his cave. Type O Negative are murderously ruminating the three-year mark since 1993's Bloody Kisses and are menacing the world with the notion that they'll actually get its follow-up, October Rust, released by... well soon. To put things into a mathematical perspective, envision this word problem: a woman is impregnated on the day of Bloody Kisses' release three years ago, and then is impregnated following the birth of each child. She could have given birth to four children upon reaching the three-year mark. Since October Rust will by Type O's fourth release, this baby's just about due.
While riding the F train down to Systems Two Studios (Brooklyn's answer to Morrisound), I can't help but think of how much has changed during the three-year time capsule since Bloody Kisses. The memories evaporate, however, as I approach the station and find my way towards the studio's covert entrance. Upon my arrival, I find Peter Steele in good spirits, if not a bit anxious to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. His anxiety is shared by the rest of the band, and grows throughout the evening like an untreated tumor. Type O has been in the studio since early that morning and it is well past dusk by the time I arrive. I can sympathize with that besides, what would a Type O session be without some pain and suffering to set the tone? But this is but one of the complimentary surprises the evening's circumstances hold in store. The most significant surprise is the fact Type O only have a few very roughly mixed tracks ready for our easy listening pleasure. My sympathy for their situation grows as I think how much work they have ahead of them.
Type O is scheduled to leave on tour with Ozzy and Sepultura in a couple of weeks, and are already drained from doing European press the weeks prior to my studio visit. ("The delays we are experience at this point stem from the amount of press we have to do," Pete explains). Adding it all up leads me to question the meaning of all this. At this point, Type O should be on the LP and resting before the tour, not talking with pesky reporters. Then it dawns on me. This is the story more than anything else. This environment of tension and turmoil is routine, but no less excruciating or real for them than it would be for you or me. Over the years, the band's resilience to stress has increased, but one can not help but think that there's more to it. That possibly Type O are following an omnipotent being, a green orb of negativity right out of the animated movie Heavy Metal...
During the interview, Peter chooses to site in the right hand corner of the studio while the rest of the band sits huddled together and comatose directly behind me on the left. I can't imagine a more erratic disposition of bodies for conducting a band interview. In retrospect, however, it was awesome, truly one-of-a-kind. The only way to ever outdo this setting would be to interview the band in sleeping bags under the mixing board. While Kenny, Josh, and Johnny gazed into the twilight, Pete pieced together the pandora's box that awaits on their new lp. He explained, "There are things on this album that I wrote when I was twelve years old but the majority of it was written while we were on tour the past couple of years. When we got back I began showing all the material to everyone else in the band. From there the material evolved further. We tried to shorten the songs and make the instrumentation the least complicated we could. We wanted to make songs more listenable. there is no reason why a part has to go four times when twice would suffice. We tried to be more humane to our listeners, as well as to include more songs on the record. There will be about 11 or 12 songs on the record out of about 16 songs that we had. The songs we didnt record may end up on future Type O Negative albums but they will probably be reworded. Every song would have fit in, the only reason we left some out were due to time limitations. 74 minutes and 40 seconds is all we had. The songs we did record were 'Red Water', 'Haunted', 'Die with Me', 'Burnt Flowers fallen', 'Wolf Moon', 'Green man', 'Cinnamon Girl', 'Druidess', 'In praise of bacchus', 'love you to death', and 'My girlfriend's girlfriend'. I can't remember if there was another one, I think that's all of them. The topics dal with sex, women, pain, misery, and paganism in various forms."
Pete livens up a bit when he elaborates on the songs' thematic content, "Wolf moon' is about a man who transforms into a werewolf whenever he engages in oral sex with a menstruating woman. 'Haunted' is about a sucubus, which is the opposite of an incubus for those who haven't read their witchcraft manuals. The oldest song on the album is probably 'Haunted'. 'My girlfriend's girlfriend' was written up at Josh's house in about 10 minutes. It looks like a good candidate for the first single."
Ultimately, October Rust may be seen as the only conceivable next step for Type O. When bloody kisses was written and released, Type O still held onto the contrasting elements that defined the music of their LP debut, Slow Deep and Hard. Fast parts in songs were pieced together alongside sludgy doom segments and choruses. By the time the band re-released bloody kisses on digipack, they had chosen to eliminate the two songs that were somewhat out of place and replace them with "Suspended in Dusk", in order to maintain a natural continuity on the record. On October Rust they've written with the continuity that they had to alter bloody kisses to obtain. Additionally, Type O has written some shorter songs, hoping that they'll avoid having longer songs chopped up for the sake of releasing singles. Type O have not entirely abandoned their long song angle, however.
"There are perhaps two or three songs on the album that are radio valuable in their non-mutilated form," explains Peter. "But the editing process will have to be used for the rest of the songs, so they could be cut down to size and make those with short attention spans happy."
With the elimination of the speed element from Type O also comes the dissipation of angry, violent and directed lyrics. Pete explains, "There aren't any traces of aggressiveness on this album. Any aggression on this album is anger turned within. Any kind of references towards blood or anything like that is in a purely sexual or emotional sense. There is nothing about hurting anyone or anything like that." Overall, October Rust has a more mature, escapist, musically synchronized direction. "This album is kind of trancy, which would be best listened to while under the influence of some semilegal drug," he advises.
Pete has also taken the album in a new romanticized and metaphoric lyrical direction without entirely foregoing his usual semi-religious references and moods. "That is something that is instilled in my since childhood and will be wrapped around my thumb until I die," he says of the religiosity. "It makes for interesting songs. There is a lot of imagery involved, especially with the Catholic Church, that a lot of people can relate to. There are many religious images involved, like stigmata, martyrdom and paying for sins in various ways."
Musically, Type O has embraced an ethereal sound which would seem to serve as the soundtrack for divine resolution. Think of all the sex Type O's music and concerts are responsible for: the song 'Christian Woman' emancipates women from the guilt of masturbation, for example. Every orgasm is a rapture, say Type O, and October Rust basks in that rapture. "There is always the Christian guilt element happening. Christianity is no different from Roman mythology, Greek mythology, or Norse mythology. The material musically is more layered, there is more counterpoint. There are more things going on. 'In Praise of Bacchus' is one of the longer songs. There are different movements. Bacchus is the Greek god of wine and merriment in the woods. He's one of my favorite deities. The song is about some poor slob sitting under a tree playing twelve-string guitar and he's writing this little tune about how he loves this woman but she hates him, which is usually how things work."
"Wolf Moon" stands out as one of the record's most orchestrated numbers. "There is some cello in there and Gregorian chants along with the typical moaning woman," Peter agrees. "A lot of the stuff on this album is like that. There were some things that got left off of Bloody Kisses that found their way onto this album. Just parts, not whole songs, but riffs here and there. Some things work, some things don't. It's an odd thing that we go into the studio with concrete ideas thinking that something is going to sound great and then when we get in here it doesn't sound too great. Then we come up with something else that usually sounds better than what we originally had."
The themes of death and sex interact on two of October Rust's songs. "'Die with me' is based on a girlfriend I had one time who didn't exactly leave me but went away to school for a little while and it was like a minor death to me" Peter explains. "And one of the things we had always talked about before her leaving was dying together. The song 'Love you to death' is about giving a woman orgasms to the point of unconsciousness. It's not exactly death. Let's just say I would hope it would be a pleasurable pseudodeath for her. Sleep is like a temporary death and there is nothing better for me after sex than jumping up and eating about four thousand calories and then going into a nice deep sleep."
There are some recurring Type O Negative themes that have moved into the foreground. There's the song "Druidess," which brings Type O's fascination with druids to the surface. "I think it's a former occupation that I would have like to have indulged in had I been born three or four thousand years ago," says Peter. "It's somethng that I've always been interested in. I don't really call myself a pagan, I'm more of just a person who has a great respect for nature. The same is that case with the druids, they do things the old-fashioned way. I certainly do not believe in magic, however. Rituals to me are pretty much just a waste of time: there is nothing before life and there is nothing after death; there is nothing up in the sky or in the center of the earth to worship or to sacrifice helpless animals to. Those people are worshipping what they cannot see and what cannot be proven. They didn't know why the seasons changed. The druids worshipped the powers of nature but also the deities they felt were responsible. I understand there were some female pagan priests but the idea behind the song 'Druidess' is about spending some time in the woods with a very attractive woman and worshipping her properly. I'd like some of my female fans to find out personally what that means."
Pete has always drawn from a variety of distinct influences, musical and otherwise, when piecing together arrangements. One can sometimes notice shifts in his music brought on by shifts in his listening interests. There's the shift towards hardcore on the second Carnivore album, as Pete became more interested in that scene. Just like the shift towards Goth on the second Type O record, leaving the Slow Deep and Hard album to serve as the transition between Carnivore and Type O. October Rust continues this pattern, showing traces of present day ambient-goth, influenced by the etherealness and atmosphere of Lycia.
"This album was more influenced by some of the more soothing, drony stuff that I listen to, but I tried to convey it in a psychedelic sense. I tried not to put people to sleep with repetition, drowning everything in reverb - but rather to make these ideas listenable," he says. In addition to their cover of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," Type O incorporates '60s elements into their own songs as well, something they had previously only touched upon during brief segments of songs ("Set me on fire," and "can't lose you') on Bloody Kisses.
"I had five older sisters and was born in 1962," says Peter. "We're all fans of the Beatles, The Stones and Hendrix. Even the first Bee Gees album is very underrated and is very psychedelic, weird and strange. Anything that is experimental from that era we seem to enjoy. The Beatles can never get too much credit. Type O Negative is just a collection of all the different styles that we grew up listening to. If you tried, you can hear Black Sabbath, Kiss, Cocteau Twins, Laibach, Devo, The Cars. We like a lot of different stuff. A song is like a painting, you don't just paint one color, you have a palette and you try to be creative. And you come out with something that is functional, yet aesthetically pleasing. It's not just musical writing but it involves production techniques as well. Josh doesn't allow me into the room anymore because I have a tantrum and cry. We certainly want to keep the album flow going, with no time between tracks. We don't want there to be some abrupt change, but we're going to be careful so as to not put the same tempos next to each other, or the same keys or the same subjects. So that there is always a difference but it's not going to be traumatic."
One of the principal elements which gives October Rust a feeling of continuity is Type O's acquired mastery for coiling melodies. "It developed over time, he says. "I think after attempting to write and execute melodic tunes I gained confidence in doing that. Its always a challenge to come up with a nice catchy, simply melody that someone can hum."
Peter concludes "I would like people to know that there are others in this world that share the same type of problems, and I don't really have any solutions, but misery loves company and we're great company for that. There isn't a hope angle on this album. There is a 'no hope' angle on this album."
E-mail me:
staynegative@oocities.com.
