Type O Negative

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For information about blood types, see AB Negative.

Founded in 1988 upon the ashes of Face of the Band Peter Steele's earlier band Carnivore, Type O Negative's Signature Style was an unlikely mixture of Black Sabbath, Goth rock and punk and completely refused to ever take itself seriously. They often used a distinct pop/indie sensibility most visible on the October Rust album. Notable for being one of the pioneers of Goth Metal. They broke up with the passing of Peter Steele in 2010.

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They provide examples of:

• Anti Christmas Song: "Red Water (Christmas Mourning)," which may just be the single most depressing Christmas song ever.
• Anti Love Song: "Black #1."
• Author Existence Failure: Steele passed away April 14, 2010. They weren't kidding this time.
• Broken Record: From "Christian Woman": "Jesus Christ looks like me."
  • In "Black #1," the chorus and "Loving you was like...loving the dead."
• Contemptible Cover: The original version of Origin of the Feces is a close-up of Peter Steele's anus.
  • And the cover of Slow, Deep, and Hard is a picture of vaginal insertion, just put through a filter that makes it not noticeable until you are looking for it. And after that, you can't stop seeing it.
• Covers Always Lie: Bloody Kisses and Dead Again have no songs about what their covers depict, and the pseudo-runic font in the October Rust booklet only means the album has not a single song about vikings.
• Creator Breakdown: World Coming Down and Dead Again.
• Deadpan Snarker: Peter Steele.
• Deal With the Devil: "All Hallows Eve" is about this.
• Despair Event Horizon: World Coming Down is the epitome of this. Three of the four interludes are extremely realistic portrayals of death brought upon by cocaine, alcohol, and cigarettes, while all of the actual songs (save for the Beatles medley at the end) deal with depressing subjects.
• Disco Dan: Guitarist Kenny Hickey is a bit of a Real Life example.
• Dolled-Up Installment: Slow, Deep and Hard consists mostly of material Carnivore didn't get around to recording.
• Drugs Are Bad: "White Slavery." Also "Sinus", "lung", and "Liver".
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: All of the members.
• Eighties Hair: Keyboard player Josh Silver had this early in their career.
• Epic Rocking: The rule rather than the exception.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Thanks to posing in Playgirl in 1995, Peter has quite a bit of attention from males (which eventually became the basis for "I Like Goils").
• Exactly What It Says On the Tin: "Bad Ground" is 30 seconds of 60Hz mains hum from equipment with a ground fault.
• Expospeak Gag: Most of the song titles on Slow, Deep and Hard.
• Face of the Band: Peter Steele.
• Fetish Fuel
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: "Wolf Moon" isn't about werewolves. It uses werewolves as a metaphor. It's about the narrator going down on his girlfriend while she's on her period.
• God Is Love Songs: Parodied by "Christian Woman," by bringing out the mentioned-on-the-trope-page Unfortunate Implications in the open: the song is about a woman harbouring Perverse Sexual Lust for Jesus Christ.
• Gothic Metal: Trope Maker and Trope Codifier.
• Greatest Hits Album: Two of them, one compiled by the band themselves, and another put together by their by-then-former record label, both largely covering the same material. In line with the band's occasional use of Self-Deprecation, the former was called The Least Worst of Type O Negative, and started with a completely silent filler track from one of their albums (the implication being that they considered 39 seconds of silence to be among their best work).
• Grief Song: Quite a few, mostly off World Coming Down and Dead Again.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: "I Like Goils" is this distilled into one song. As mentioned above, it was written after Peter Steele discovered (after posing in Playgirl) that an estimated 50% or more of Playgirl readers and subscribers were men, and that he had unintentionally become a minor gay icon.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Peter Steele is a rare male example.
• I Am the Band: Averted. Though Peter Steele was without question the Face of the Band and main songwriter, many decisions were made by other members (such as using programmed drums on three of their albums).
• In the Style Of: Their cover of "Cinnamon Girl" is probably the best example.
• Intercourse With You: "Wolf Moon." Seriously. Go back and re-read the lyrics.
  • Many of their songs on their October Rust album qualify.
• Large Ham: Peter Steele's singing has elements of this.
• Lead Bassist: Peter Steele is Type B and C.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "We Hate Everyone," "Dead Again," and many others.
• Misattributed Song: "Angel", a song by the extremely obscure German Gothic Metal band Tears of Passion, is sometimes mistaken for a Type O Negative song, due to the similarities in style. The sad thing is, the only reason anyone has ever heard of Tears of Passion is because of the confusion.
  • Mad Machinery's cover of Sarah McLachlan's "Possession" is frequently, and erroneously, labeled as a Type O- song. The overall style is similar, and the vocals sound almost identical.
• Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: Generally 7, veering into 8 territory on their debut, and some of their more playful or slow songs at 5 or 6.
• Mood Whiplash: Sometimes within a song, but sometimes over the course of an album, and usually deliberate.
• Most Writers Are Male
• Murder Ballad: "Xero Tolerance," "Prelude to Agony".
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly
• New Sound Album: Bloody Kisses, which was where they found their signature gothic/doom sound while for the most part moving away from the Carnivore-styled thrash of Slow, Deep and Hard.
• Painting the Fourth Wall: The Origin of the Feces, a fake live album.
• Perverse Sexual Lust: "How Could She?" humorously discusses this.
• Polyamory: "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" (presented with a heavy dose of Girl On Girl Is Hot).
• Post Modernism: Tracks like "Bad Ground" and "Skip It" have no other purpose than to be "meta."
• Pun-Based Title: The Origin of the Feces, "We Were Electrocute" and "The Profits of Doom".
• Rated G for Gangsta: The Bloody Kisses album shamelessly mocks this phenomenon by way of Mood Whiplash, October Rust is a seemingly straighter example, and World Coming Down an inversion. When they apparently tried this genuinely with Life is Killing Me...another Creator Breakdown happened and they made the dark, aggressive Dead Again.
• Refuge in Audacity
• Signature Song: "Black No. 1"; "Christian Woman".
• Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: They have songs all over this, from "Christian Woman" at the extreme silly end to "White Slavery" at the far extreme of the serious end.
• Soprano and Gravel: Peter Steele's smooth, resonant bass contrasts quite well with guitarist Kenny Hickey's more aggressive style of singing.
  • Steele himself comes strikingly close to filling both roles on certain tracks. See "Nettie," in which he sings the chorus melody in three different octaves over the course of the song.
• Spoken Word in Music - A couple of examples, the most notable probably being the opening of "Christian Woman."
• Stage Names: Pete's real surname is Ratajzcyk.
• Stealth Parody: The band's Signature Song, "Black No. 1," is an indictment of the entire Goth subculture. Which, of course, didn't stop goth kids everywhere from adopting it as their anthem.
• Tall, Dark and Handsome: At 6'6", Peter Steele was the epitome of this trope.
  • Tall, Dark and Snarky: Peter was known for sarcastic, self deprecating humor as well.
• Title-Only Chorus: "Black No. 1."
• Troubled but Cute: Peter Steele. That is all.