Aside from any albums that would have been "new" at the time (I'm pretty sure that Dead Again wasn't released yet), Slow, Deep and Hard was the last Type O Negative testimony that I swigged. I don't know why, but I remember being surprised by its quality. Could a band be this consistent? Indeed. It was a foregone conclusion that I would take to these fuming, cartilage-levigating grinds, but holy creepers, it blew me away. I was toasted by the raaaage of "Xero Tolerance." I was allayed by the oyster smoke gloom of "Prelude to Agony." I was decked by the thrash incursion of "Unsuccessfully Coping With the Natural Beauty of Infidelity." I was...well, you get the picture.
SDH - as it shall henceforth be known - is a towering affair. Plain and simple. There are strains of the melodic Lugosi rawk that The Drab Four would later adopt, but supremely, the material is a cranky extension of Carnivore. The riffs are irritable. Most of the tracks may be exceptionally lengthy (even the murmur of an instrumental takes six minutes to resolve itself), but they act like musical tantrums. "Xero Tolerance," in particular, is an outburst of dyspeptic wattage. Of course, Peter Steele was the main composer in both Carnivore and Type O Negative, so similarities were somewhat inescapable at the onset.
The lyrics have the same sardonic bite. Catharsis is achieved through brutal honesty. Personally, I feel rounded after shouting "I'll kill you tonight!" at the heavens. Dare I say, liberated! SDH will spike your adrenaline, but it also has an emollient effect. It almost becomes hypnotic during "Glass Walls of Limbo" and the sixty-four seconds of silence that compounds "The Misinterpretation of Blah-Blah Songtitles." If I had to levy a fine or register a complaint under duress, I would request an increase in tunage. There are only five real pieces of aggro-clatter here. Yes, a couple of compositions are twelve-minute epics, but...damn it to Hell, I crave more speed sludge(?)!
I'm in no position to vent, I suppose. I'm happy with Type O Negative's debut because it just so happens to be one of the best debut recordings fucking ever. Slow, Deep and Hard is incredibly unique when you take its surroundings into consideration. How many other groups managed to pool New York-style hardcore, Sabbath-style doom, Beatles-style harmonies and Munsters-style goth trappings together in 1991? And before you go there, Limp Bizkit didn't form until 1994. I'm a laugh riot, ain't I?
Still one of my favorite Type O albums. Second only to World Coming Down in fact and its one that I kind of feel tends to get a bit overlooked. Perhaps its because they hadn't quite fully developed their signature sounds but its the particular sound of this album that makes it so incredible. Its still astonishing how they were able to naturally fuse all those styles you mentioned and have it not sound like a total clusterfuck with lyrics that came off a genuine complete with Pete's trademark smartass sense of humor that would only become more pronounced on later albums. Its really the perfect debut, bridging the gap between Pete’s past with Carnivore and what was eventually to come.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those albums, just like Black Sabbath’s debut or Godflesh’s self-titled EP that when you listen to it you just know these guys are onto something special. It still hold up too because no other bands wrote like Type O. Good call on this series, interested to read the others.