Tag Archives: Metal

Music I Love: “Bloody Kisses”, Type O Negative (1993)

I spent most of my youth as a Goth (with a capital G), and for those of you who remember that time (or those of you who are still there), the music you listened to more or less defined who you were. In many of my hopeless and black moods, of course, there was nowhere to turn to than the wonderful misery of My Dying Bride, or the gloom-laden ballads of Sentenced. For the anger and fury, there was nothing else but Metallica and Slayer. When it was time to absolutely, once and for all I’m-really-doing-it-this-time slit my wrists, it could only be Marilyn Manson.

But, among all of these, there was one band that defined Goth more than any other I could think of, and this was the music I turned to when I simply wanted to dress in black, don the crosses and the black eyeliner, and sit moping in the back of a pub, pitying the fools who thought they were having a good time. That band was, of course, Type O Negative.

Type O Negative had a long and painful birth. As far back as 1976, four kids from Brooklyn were already gathering together in basements and garages, throwing together punk covers and goth rock. Like any young band, they went through endless lineup changes, finishing off in the eights with basically the same members as they had started out with. However, it took until nearly 1990 for their subversive music to be noticed, and their debut, Slow Deep and Hard to be released.

Ever mocking in their misery, Slow Deep and Hard featured extremely long, totally un-radio-friendly heavy metal doom, with bizarre (yet ultimately comprehensible) titles such as Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity, a rather graphic song about being cheated on, to Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 × 10^8 cm^-3 gm^-1 sec^-2, about suicide. While popular, it wasn’t until 1993 that the band truly broke through with Bloody Kisses.

A gothic masterpiece, Bloody Kisses is ultimately most famous for the title song, and the miserably humorous Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All). The album extends for a full 73 minutes, passing from dark religious cynicism on Christian Woman to the bizarrely drudging cover of Seals and Crofts’ Summer Breeze, to genuine, suicidal misery on Bloody Kisses (A Death in the Family).

In hindsight (hind-hearing?), every song on this album is excellent, including the disturbing interludes such as Fay Wray Come Out and Play and Dark Side of the Womb, but at the time, the songs that truly spoke to me were those drenched in gloom and blackness. Black No. 1, so titled after the popular hair dye, references everything stereotypically goth from vampires to Halloween to the Munsters, and even a nod to Ministry‘s 1984 hit, Every Day is Halloween. Christian Woman, with its rather explicit lyrics of religious control and sexual repression, spoke deeply to the sexually-desperate teenage boy in me.

The one song, however, that truly got to me, that empathized with my own misery and formed the soundtrack for the trips to the darkest places in my mind, was the title track, Bloody Kisses. A depressingly morose song about a girlfriend who had committed suicide, it speaks of the strength it takes to kill oneself, the misery of being left behind, and challenges the dogma regarding suicide as a cry for help, or for attention. Surrounded by darkness, hopelessly depressed, and hopelessly attracted to a girl who was just as hopelessly depressed as I was, the lyrics spoke my own thoughts through the song.

A pair of souls become undone

Where were two now one

Divided by this wall of death

I soon will join you yet

With my blood I’ll find your love

You found the strength to end you life

As you did so shall I

 Bloody Kisses – Type O Negative, 1993

Though my mind is (sometimes) in a better place now, this song continues to hold a special place in my heart, as a reminder of just how dark the world can be. Type O Negative continue to be a favorite band of mine, and their music of darkness and depression are all the more poignant now – Peter Steele, founding member and singer, died in 2010 from heart failure, at the peak of his abilities. He was only forty-eight years old. Needless to say, there will be no further Type O Negative, but the seven albums they left us are a memory unto themselves – a biography of the misery, depression and black humor of the man who created them.

R.I.P. Peter Steele

1962 – 2010

Music I Love: “Like Gods of the Sun”, My Dying Bride (1996)

There are four bands I could not live without, and the doom and despair of My Dying Bride is at the top of that list. For decades, they have been darkening the musical world with their unique brand of metal, and each of their albums has wrenched my heart and filled it with darkness.

They began their career in the early nineties, releasing the groundbreaking As the Flower Withers in 1992. Though the influence of eighties death metal is still apparent here, striking songs such as Sear Me and The Return of the Beautiful stand out as a preview for what was to come: slow, haunting and utterly crushing with the weight of darkness.

The follow-up, 1993’s Turn Loose the Swans, set the stage for the rest of their career. Gone were the fast death metal riffs, and for the first time we heard Aaron Stainthorpe’s wonderful, gloomy and heartbreaking voice, coupled with the dark growls of their death metal roots. What we were left with was the epitome of doom metal.

The Angel and the Dark River, in 1995, continued the melodic, atmospheric trend, and dispensed with growled vocals entirely. The violin, which had been a mainstay of their lineup since the very beginning, became ever more prominent, and the band were clearly leaping from strength to strength.

And then, in 1996, they released Like Gods of the Sun. To this day, this remains a masterpiece of doom metal, and it was here, on their fourth album, that we could see all the pieces finally come together. Crushing yet memorable, songs such as the title track, Grace Unhearing, and For You envelop the listener in a black, dark world of sound. Words of darkness and despair sweep around you, speaking of evil, pain and sadness:

Falling, drowning, deeper and forever

Choking, sinking, deeper into this ocean

Screaming, crying, for someone to save me

Reaching, hoping, calling to no one

Grace Unhearing – My Dying Bride, 1996

As we finally approach the ending of the album, the exceptionally dark It Will Come gives way seamlessly to the brilliant Here in the Throat. With its sudden change of rhythm halfway through, it pounds relentlessly onwards, drawing you inexorably towards the final, inevitable conclusion.

Except it doesn’t end there. After an album of doom, darkness and heaviness, something entirely other suddenly soothes its way through the speakers. Entering with haunting beauty – only synth and violin – the weeping, tragic For My Fallen Angel brings the album to the only close it could have possibly had. A three-stanza spoken poem, it swirls around you, and as the final notes linger, and then finally fade to silence, you feel as though there is nothing left in all the world, and you are left in eternal, silent darkness; a soothing, warm oblivion that will take you away forever.

This album was such a mirror for my own state of mind at the time that it has become inextricably linked to the darkest of thoughts for me. It played endlessly through sleepless, gothic, depressed nights, when candles burned down around me and the scent of blood rose in the air.

What’s better than seeing Alice Cooper?

Seeing Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden live in concert!

Iron Maiden, with very special guest Alice Cooper, last night at the Prudential Center in Newark. There are no words to describe the awesomeness of this (let me try):

Totally. Freaking. Insanely. Utterly. Brilliantly. Stupendously. Crazy. Awesomely. Awesome.

That’s maybe 10% there.

I’m a little deafer than I was before – perfect. I’m a little blinder than I was before – just how it should be. I’m not drunk, which is not quite how it should be, but at $9 a bottle it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t mosh, which really is the thing I’m most disappointed in myself for, but I’m feeling a little too old for that.

Alice Cooper was incredible. The guy is sixty-four years old, and he commanded that stage like he was twenty. Every song – all the classics – were perfect, and despite the venue’s lousy acoustics, they sounded great. His lead guitarist was a girl, which was great to see, and his antics were fun – though a little on the tame side, perhaps. They did decapitate him at one point, but I was disappointed that there were no great spouts of blood. Perhaps it’s more realistic that way. His costume changes were great – I don’t know how he went through so many so fast, but from his black leather riding gear to a mad scientist to crazy Nazi guy, he was a veritable chameleon. His legendary charisma really shone through, despite little interaction with the crowd; he whipped their photographer with his riding crop, and when that didn’t work, ran him through with a pirate sword. Lots of fun.

Forty minutes to set up for Iron Maiden. What a wait. I think they might have had some technical problems, because the P.A. started playing UFO at one point, which really wasn’t the right thing to do. When they did blast on though…yes! Yes! Yes!

Our seats were near the front and very high up, so sadly our visibility was not the best. Poor Nicko McBrain, he was so hidden behind stage props that the most I could see was the occasional crash of his cymbals! Steve Harris, pummeling away on his bass – now that was a real pleasure. He looked so damn chuffed, like it was their first gig, and their thousandth. He’s proud of his band, you can tell. Janick, Dave and Adrian were at their finest, and I’ve not seen a band so in tune with each other in a long time. And Bruce…Bruce Dickinson was a madman, racing from one end of the stage to the other, screaming at the top of his rather powerful lungs, and inciting the moshing crowd to sing for him (which must have saved on his throat). It’s a shame he cut his hair short, but he is an airline pilot, and I must say I’ve never seen a metalhead airline pilot (there must be one somewhere).

Having said all of that…not all was perfect. Iron Maiden suffered from some pretty bad mixing, and it was difficult to make out what Bruce was singing. The guitars had some very bad distortion (not the good kind) in the high end, and once again were difficult to make out. Iron Maiden are a melodic band, and the melodies just weren’t making themselves heard. I could tell they were playing perfectly, but the sound just simply wasn’t good.

Other things – the gay couple next to us were exceptionally polite, but the bunch of nutters beside them were a pain; they were constantly shoving past us to relieve themselves of the copious amounts of beer they were consuming, and more than once crushed our toes. Some shithead also decided it would be completely appropriate to start smoking, which is not only rude but also illegal. Luckily, security sorted his ass out.

So what do I think? I feel let down by the sound, which isn’t the band’s fault. I feel incredibly satisfied that I saw them, though; I can safely go to my grave now, able to say:

I saw Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper live, and I can safely go to my grave now!

Good-bye!