TYPE O NEGATIVE – Life Is Killing Me

Shortly after Type O Negative released World Coming Down in 1999, Peter Steele said the album was only worth one purpose — feeding it to the fireplace. A lot of fans with the same talent of honesty as the band’s singer would agree, even though the track “Pyretta Blaze” in itself made it worth buying the CD. Then, Type O Negative made a “best of” album, and more than just the fans mentioned above gave birth to the thought that the story of Type O Negative was reaching an end. Several pessimistic interviews made with Steele and the band in that same period added food to that thought.

Then the band faced a choice, and after a bit of a break they probably found out they should try to postpone getting a day job even longer, and so they went back to the studio. Life is Killing Me is the result.

Listening to their new album you don’t need long to find several reasons to be happy about Steele and co giving their careers another shot. Track two, “I Don’t Wanna Be Me,” is a huge party breaker! With this one, they’ve got a perfect live opener. Close to punk, this song’s catchy chorus will probably force everyone in any audience to go mad screaming the lyrics.

The following track, “Less Than Zero,” doesn’t break any new ground for the band at all, but states what this band is all about: keyboard wrapped guitar riffs swimming in mud chased by hungry drum beats. Parts of both the melody and the strings emit sounds unpleasantly close to Nuno Bettencourt’s (ex-Extreme) “Fallen Angel,” but in a couple of weeks I probably won’t notice it any longer.

The album goes on without any highlights, like “Love You to Death” or “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” from the stunning October Rust album (1996). What stands out on Life is Killing Me is the faster punk oriented stuff and the humor that comes along with it. Their fastest straight forward rock songs are the album’s strongest ones, e.g. the aforementioned “I Don’t Wanna Be Me,” “I Like Goils,” and “Angry Inch.” Excellent songs! Their more typical slow Sabbath-ish, riff-based tracks gets too slow and will bore you before you heard them half way through. Despite all of this, the title track and the humorous “How Could She?” succeeds in constantly catching your attention, even though they suffer from taking too long before they’re getting somewhere.

Another pleasant moment is the album’s short instrumental track “Drunk in Paris,” that brings my mind back to the mood of Alice In Chains’ instrumental ”Whale & Wasp.” Type O Negative doesn’t get any closer to melancholy than this.

Life is Killing Me contains the cathedral-goth-magic and the dark humor one should expect from a Type O Negative album. In my case, I’ve both expected it and looked forward to it. I’m very pleased as long as I skip the boring parts.

I roll the dice till it shows four eyes.