Better Than Nevermind - No. 10 : Type O Negative - Slow, Deep and Hard

Type O Negative - Slow, Deep and Hard (Roadrunner)

Should I be stranded on a desert island, or better yet a bunker deep underground in Scandinavia, and I could bring only one heavy metal album, I would bring the definitive magnum opus brought into the declining western civilization by Pete Steele and his merry menagerie of demented demons. A short blurb in an issue of Reflex had attracted my gaze and I immediately went and ordered that slab of doom from Dutchy’s. It got side tracked by grunge and My Bloody Valentine but couldn’t resist having the cathartic dark sludge engulf my ears and my brain. With the first track the quartet plunges the listener right into the abyss of the tortured soul of a man who has lost everything, but most of all his woman. Countless rock artists and even metal acts have done (and sometimes overdone) the narrative, Type O Negative not only takes it up a notch, it catapults it in overdrive over to nothingness. This album is this ride until it gets sucked into the void of depression. Each <song> is further divided into acts, and are therefore better understood as suites, that gravitates from thrash cavalcades and rigmaroles to Sabbath dirges to doom-laden implosions, the vocals alternately shouted, screamed or sung in a deep baritone voice, all bathed in gothic overtones thanks to the keyboards and sound effects. All the clichés of heavy metal are blended in this horrific, terrifying, depressing and sad tale of a man incapable of coping with life's worst nightmare.