It's going to be hard to rise and shine to write this review. I'll state right off the bat that I dig 1999's World Coming Down, but it's a bleak slog. Years back, I read an interview with The Man of Steele where he remarked that he was a depressed, drug-benumbed sorehead during the recording of this album. He didn't like listening to it much because it reminded him of his inner cricks and fidgets. Now when I listen to it, I think of how we lost an impossibly talented frontman who spent the corpus of his adulthood in the kedge of distress. You never get anywhere with a corpus in a kedge. My point is, World Coming Down is a bummer. While it's true that I listen to mopey metal all the time, this record leaves a dyspathetic gash near my pulmonary valve.
It's hard to explain. "White Slavery" and "Who Will Save the Sane?" turn my recesses to gruel. "Everyone I Love is Dead" turns my entrails to polenta. "Pyretta Blaze" turns my...um, breadbasket to a chunky lobscouse. I told you it was hard to explain. Since those sentences didn't make a lick of goddamn sense, I'll repeat the fact that these tunes are a bummer. You can practically smell the self-loathing. That's the main reason why I spin this Type O Negative long player (and boy, it's long) less frequently than the others. Musically, it's indisputably capable. Kenny Hickey is let loose, and he hurls hostile riffs to the heavens with the mighty strength of a hundred Hulks.
Guitars rung attenuated on October Rust, almost faint. There is no mistaking World Coming Down as anything other than a guitar-heavy ("Hickey-heavy" sounds wrong) collection of jackhammer dirges. The opening chug of "Everything Dies" alone seals the deal. Sexually. There is plenty of good stuff here, but in my two-faced opinion, we have winks where the boys mimic themselves. By 1999, their signature moves were set in stone. I sense that Peter was playing it safe, timorous of alienating core fans any further. Thus, the songwriting is kept in a predictable vain. Did the title track really need to extravagate for eleven minutes?
Earlier efforts mixed shit up with puckish gaiety ("My Girlfriend's Girlfriend") and lethal repartee ("Kill All the White People"). World Coming Down doesn't offer spirited experimentation until you reach the finale, a plucky, first-class Beatles medley. Eh, ratings can be a bitch. I don't know where I fall on this one. "All Hallows Eve" is fun as the token horror shanty, but it's not a patch on "Wolf Moon" or "Black No. 1." The drum machine is in tip-top shape. I'd probably enjoy World Coming Down more if it smiled every so often. God, I can't believe I said that. Abbath says, "God, I can't believe you said that."
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