New liner notes that emphasize this aspect of the band in 2019 do them no favors either.īut just a few songs after “Goils,” this same band absolutely tears through a straight-faced, straightforward cover of “Angry Inch,” as in Hedwig and…. This regrettable strain of their work continues on and off through 2003’s Life Is Killing Me and its infantile heterosexist anthem “I Like Goils,” in which Steele roars “I’m proud not to be P.C.!” like he’s auditioning for a Netflix standup special. Even the album covers-a blurry closeup of sexual penetration and a crystal-clear photo of Steele’s anus respectively-all but invite you not to listen. There’s little of musical value on either album, which are also the main, but by no means the only, outlet for the band’s most dunderheaded Noo Yawk shock-jock-style material about class, race, gender, and sexuality. (That Type O chose to exchange insults with an imaginary audience on its “live” album tells you a lot about Type O.) These feel more like an elaborate prank played on the listener than a new group finding its sea legs: Album two, The Origin of the Feces, is essentially album one, Slow, Deep and Hard, re-recorded with new titles for the same songs and, for some reason, fake crowd noise edited in for a faux-live effect-complete with hecklers. In particular, it means shelling out for vinyl versions of the band’s first two thrash and hardcore-influenced records, which predate the full flower of Steele’s voice. These songs showcase keyboardist and producer Josh Silver’s ability to create colorful soundscapes that belie the band’s strict black, white, and green color palette.īut this is a box set, not a greatest-hits comp or even an a-la-carte reissue of the catalog, and that means putting up with the bad and the ugly along with the good. My current favorite: Life Is Killing Me’s “(We Were) Electrocute,” an ode to turning neighborhood heads side-by-side with an old flame. The latter element manifested not just in the Type O’s choice of covers (Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl,” Seals & Croft’s “Summer Breeze,” an honest-to-god Beatles medley) or in its nickname (“The Drab Four”), but in lush original compositions. The music itself displayed a similar duality, alternating between doom-laden dirges and swirling psychedelia. The song’s ferocity emerges from the band’s hulking exterior and Steele’s lyrical vulnerability, which sounds trapped inside it. (He died of an unrelated aortic aneurysm in 2010.) Two songs-the savage, hook-laden “Everyone I Love Is Dead” and the harrowing and bittersweet “Everything Dies”-tackle that pain by wondering if it’s worth going on without those he’s lost. It’s effectively a concept album about the death of people close to Steele, who by then was dealing with life-threatening addictions of his own. World Coming Down goes even further down this guilt-ridden road. He closes October Rust’s anthemic “Love You to Death” by plaintively asking the object of his affection “Am I good enough for you?”, clearly already believing the answer to be “no.” Steele shared vocal duties with his gifted guitarist Kenny Hickey, who handled the shouty bits over time, this allowed Steele to hone his voice into something not just creepy or sexy but actually romantic, even abject. Both songs showcase Steele’s distinctive, vampiric baritone, complete with theatrically rolled R’s and overemphasized consonants (“on her milk-white neck- kkh, the devil’s mark- k”). 1,” an affectionate send-up of a goth girl’s beauty regimen that launched the band into the public consciousness, via a striking black-and-white video that received heavy Beavis and Butthead rotation. The best-known of these kick off 1993’s Bloody Kisses: “Christian Woman” explores its subject’s sublimation of sexuality into the crucified body of Christ with all the subtlety of “Ken Russell’s The Devils: The Musical.” It continues with “Black No.
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