Biography:
New York goth metal quartet Type O Negative is led by vocalist/bassist/songwriter Peter Steele and features guitarist Ken Hickey, keyboardist Josh Silver, and drummer Johnny Kelly. Steele formed Type O Negative in 1990 out of the remnants of thrash band Carnivore, along with his friend Sal Abruscato (drums). Type O`s music slowed down the tempos of thrash metal, alternately satirizing and wallowing in a glum mixture of misanthropy, misogyny, depression, and vampiric vocals, as well as loads of cheap-sounding guitar distortion. The band`s debut album, Slow, Deep and Hard, was released in 1991, featuring long, mopey dirges with titles like "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity." Not everyone appreciated Steele`s dark sense of humor, though, and he was roasted by some critics who charged him with being a homicidal misogynist and Nazi sympathizer. A fake live album, The Origin of the Feces, appeared the following year, its notorious cover depicting a pair of spread buttocks (the album was eventually reissued with less graphic artwork). 1993`s Bloody Kisses added surprisingly skilled Beatlesque melodies, and Steele`s often ironic treatments of his depressing subject matter and the emotional and musical excesses of goth (particularly Type O Negative`s brand) were deadly accurate and often very funny. Abruscato departed following its release to join Life of Agony, at which point Kelly joined the band. Bloody Kisses slowly won the band a cult following, thanks in part to the video for "Black No. 1" and the band`s constant touring, and the album cracked Billboard`s Top 200 well over a year after its release. The more upbeat follow-up, October Rust, appeared in 1996, building on the more pop-oriented tracks of its predecessor; in the meantime, Steele achieved notoriety by appearing as a Playgirl magazine centerfold. World Coming Down finally appeared in 1999 after a three-year hiatus, a considerably darker affair than October Rust but proof that -- in spite of Steele`s pronouncements to the contrary -- its predecessors were no fluke. In 2000, Roadrunner compiled The Least Worst of Type O Negative, which featured European single edits and alternate mixes of the band`s most popular songs, plus several unreleased tracks. Life Is Killing Me arrived in 2003 with a cover of "Angry Inch" from the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Four years passed before the band returned with Dead Again.
