Ideally, a band will evolve from one album to the next. I can't believe that this is a hard concept for some bands to grasp ("some" is italicized so as not to implicate Type O Negative). Metallica seemed shocked by the boomerang recoil fans responded with in answer to their queue of streamlined rock releases in the 90's. And I don't mean to pick on Metallica; I just need an example. I remember an interview with Lars where he intimated - I'm paraphrasing here - that they felt damned either way. "We can't change OR stay the same! Wah! I'm a whiny bitch!" I'm confident that's a direct quote. In any event, he completely garbled the wishes of his adherents.
Nobody wanted Ride the Lightning IV: Dream Warriors. By the same token, nobody wanted a collaboration with Mary J. Blige or Montell Jordan, although I contend that "This Is How We Do It" is a sick jam. Die-hards merely anticipated evolution. Impose a few tweaks here and there, but leave the core unmolested. You should never have to return to your roots. Deracination* kills trees, you dummy. My point (finally!) is that Type O knew how to evolve, musically and even spiritually. There is a character arc ranging from Slow, Deep and Hard to Dead Again. It's a plot without holes. Somehow, each Type O disc is spun of high quality, and yes, I'm doing a celebratory dance over that pun. Touchdown, suckers!
The group would have been forgiven for delivering a mellow coda. Sure, we couldn't have possibly known that this was their swan song, but we knew they were getting older. I can only speak for myself, but I definitely wasn't envisaging Peter Steele reaching back into his Carnivore bag of tricks and parenting a nest egg of pissy, crotchety riffs that would feel right at home on...well, a Carnivore omnibus. The title track launches the record with a bombardment of speedy stuff (after the requisite doom intro). "Tripping a Blind Man" is a top-tier Type O tune. It has swagger, impassioned vocals, bayonet-sharp lyrics ('You think it's your place to dispense justice/Well, I've been sent to judge the judges'), and canorous harmonies.
"The Profit of Doom" is heavier than a fucking fuck. Is it a minute or two on the bloated side? Yeah, but I can live with it. The songwriting is strong enough to carry protracted track lengths. "These Three Things" is the sole instance of an epic number being sustained past the point of necessity. Still, it features gnarly moments that justify its inclusion (Pete screams his giant head off, and it's magnificent). The pensive "September Sun" can be cloying until the near-supernatural guitar solo soars beyond speakers and into the outer realm.
Kenny Hickey, man! I'm telling you. He rips another badass lead in "She Burned Me Down," a sentimental favorite in the Coccaro household. In totality, I almost want to say that Dead Again is a sentimental favorite. It comes dangerously close to scoring five Abbaths. For a Type O Negative experience, it's practically perfect. You can award your own ratings. Like every other energized listener, I've always wondered where those four dicks from Brooklyn would have transmigrated as a creative collective. Would they have looked to October Rust and subsumed their 80's goth influences? Would they have heaved their hardcore base and focused on their 60's psych influences? Would they have killed each other???
*The act of uprooting. The more you know!
No comments:
Post a Comment