Hails to you all

[BloodHornVital]

Greetings from one metalmaniac to you others.

I'm aspiring guitarist in his mid-30's.

Open minded long time listener of metal music. Mostly into black-death-thrash type of metal ála Slayer, Celtic frost, Darkthrone, Deicide, Black Sabbath and all the myriads those kind of legends have spawned.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Infernal greetings to thee… or you know welcome aboard. Most of us prefer the more extreme side of metal, so you’ll probably fit in just fine.

[BloodHornVital]

2 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Infernal greetings to thee… or you know welcome aboard. Most of us prefer the more extreme side of metal, so you’ll probably fit in just fine.

Haha, very good then. I respect anyone who delves into more morbid side of things.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Well dive right in, I promise we don’t bite… Well, not that often, anyway

[BloodHornVital]

I will, in due course. Any on going things I should know? Other than the rules of course.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Welcome to our little corner of the internet. We have an older crowd here, most of us are between 30 and 65 with the heaviest concentration being Gen-X dudes in their 40's. So most of us have a low tolerance for teenie-bopper shit. Beyond that pretty much anything goes, we have a fairly wide variety of metal tastes represented here. But anytime I see a new guy who's not listing mainstream metalcore bands as his faves I'm encouraged. Hope you like it here and decide to stick around.

[BloodHornVital]

Tvanks, I hope to stick around. Yes, older crowd sounds better. Not into metalcore or emo stuff at all apart maybe a song here and there, but I don't see exception making a rule. I've been listening Vomitory mostly in the past months when they came up with a full-length. I have a wife who likes modern Borknagar and we both like Type-O-Negative.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Spent many months last year listening to Type-O after I sort of rediscovered Dead Again, which I've now decided is their best album. And Vomitory is my second favorite Swedeath band after Grave. And while I can't personally appreciate any Borknager/Enslaved, we do have a contingent here that digs all that progressive stuff. So yeah as Master Blivvington said, you'll fit right in. 

[BloodHornVital]

Yea, I've listened Type-O since a little kid. You think Dead again is the best? I have to revisit that one apparently. Haha, Grave would be my 2nd choice from Sweden. They have some beefy guitar tunes. I don't think I've ever listened anything Enslaved has done after Eld. Proge stuff gets too hmm.. complicated sometimes. I do appreciate Borknagar's clean vocals very much though.

Thanks, guess I'll fit then.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Bought my first Type-O album Bloody Kisses in '93 on the same day I bought Sacred Reich's Independent. I was 32. Not sure why I remember this 30 years later but I do. I wanted vinyl at the time but I had to settle for cassettes for those two because they had stopped releasing a lot of stuff on vinyl for awhile there in the early 90's. I'm a little envious of you younger people who were fortunate enough to grow up with heavy metal to listen to right from the time they first became interested in music. All I had growing up was Zeppelin and Sabbath, I had to wait 'til after I was out of school for heavy metal to come along.

[FatherAlabaster]

I hated Bloody Kisses when it came out. I was in high school. Didn't start coming around to them until October Rust was released, which is funny because it's now my least favorite of theirs by a mile.

Enslaved and Borknagar have some similarity on their early albums, but they've charted very different paths for a long time now. Enslaved is one of my favorite bands in any iteration, Borknagar has put out two albums I like. I suppose from a goatherder's perspective it's all the same, it's either brutal filth or lollipops and cotton candy.

In any case welcome to the forum, new dude.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Re TON I would say Slow, Deep & Hard is probably the album of theirs. I play the most, though I enjoy most of whathey put out. On Swedeath Grave are probably the most consistent band from that scene, as far as quality goes. Borknagar have one album I like, and Enslaved are a mixed bag, I really don’t go for their more progressive stuff.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

I just link those two bands together in my mind because of the Ivar connection, that's all. I haven't actually heard enough Borknager to even remember how close to Enslaved it was or not. And I'm only somewhat familiar with Enslaved's music because I have friends who keep working on me to give them another chance. But it never gets any better for me, I hate them. They have little moments where I'll think "Hey this ain't so terrible" but then they always ruin it with more of their prog nonsense.

Took me a bit to warm up to Bloody Kisses as well. I had never heard them when I bought it, they were a reco from a friend who swore they were the best thing since Black Sabbath. Wasn't sure what to think when I saw the two chicks on the cover, but I went ahead and picked it up anyway. I liked the first two tracks (Black #1 and Jesus Christ Looks Like Me) and the Summer Breeze cover right from the beginning, but I had to work on liking the rest of it. Now 30 years later they're one of my top 20 most-played bands. I still love October Rust but at this point I always have to skip Love You to Death and sometimes even Wolf Moon. But I mean Green Man, Red Water, Die With Me, Burnt Flowers, Bacchus these are all great songs. But yet Dead Again, WCD and LIKM all rank ahead of it. I have it tied for 4th with BK.

 

Speaking of cotton candy and lollipops though... I was in the kitchen earlier making coffee after shoveling yesterday's stupid 2 inches. And out of the blue I started singing this golden oldie....

Have no idea why or where it came from but there I was making the kid some lunch with "you are my candy giiiiirrrl" coming out of my pie hole. Kid made me dial it up on my phone so he could hear the original. I'm now quite sure this is where Def Leffard got the idea for their song. 

[AlSymerz]

17 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

Now that's the metal I came here for.

[BloodHornVital]

@GoatmasterGeneral I guess we all have little things to envy about each other. I’ve always thought I was born 10-20 years too late.  

As a kid, Type-O seemed like a girl thing, because of the gothic image. I was 13 years old or something. I placed them in the same pile with Cradle of filth. None of the gothic stuff wasn’t interesting until one girl turned my hormones on. With her I listened to World coming down which got me hooked to Type-O-Negative. Life is killing me came around a year or two later, which I think is my favorite TON album to this day. By the time Dead again was out I had moved deeper to black and death metal so I got into that years later when Peter had passed away.  

 

About swedeath: Yeah, I think Vomitory and Grave are those kinds of bands of which you know what you are going to get every time they put out an album. I simply prefer Vomitory because they are faster, haha. 

[RelentlessOblivion]

I think life is killing me was the first TON album I heard, think I worked backwards through their discography from there, and somehow always forgot about Dead again.

[BloodHornVital]

Someone here with a deeper knowledge may feel free to correct me, but I recognize Life is killing me as TON’s most mainstream album at the height of their career. It’s just so catchy and enjoyable and has a lot of nostalgic value personally. I keep learning new insights about it as well, like the song Todd’s ship gods is based on Peter visiting his father’s grave for the first time after several years since his father passed away. The man wasn’t even at his father’s funeral because of personal reasons. 

 

Dead again I remember having good reviews when it came out, but I guess their fame was settling down by that time and it has a more doomy atmosphere without the gothic feeling their earlier albums had, which is why it didn’t catch on so much. I can see why GoatmasterGeneral likes that one. 

 

I’ve never actually bothered to check TON’s earlier albums prior to October rust. I mean I’ve listened to a track here and there but never spinned one whole album through. The four albums October rust, World coming down, Life is killing me and Dead again have always felt all the Type-O-Negative I ever needed. 

[RelentlessOblivion]

You’re not wrong, life is killing me would certainly be the band at their most accessible. That hole Gothic metal/rock thing kind of started with Bloody Kisses, an album I enjoy more than October rust, but less than world coming down. Actually the debut is radically different to the aforementioned Gothic metal/rock sound. It’s kind of like a doomy Carnivore. 

[BloodHornVital]

Yea, Bloody kisses makes me imagine I’m in a 90’s romantic Dracula movie or something. Can’t help it. Even if the later albums have same kind of themes I'm fine with them. I guess the cover makes all the difference. If I want deeper themes about vampires and werewolves I’ll turn to raw black metal instead.

 

I haven't listened to much Carnivore either. I think when I found out that they had some influence on sludge(not 100% sure) I gave one album a listen, but it didn't really stick. Makes me want to listen to Celtic frost or Sodom instead.

[RelentlessOblivion]

That’s fair, forums, like this, would get pretty boring, if we all had exactly the same taste in metal.

[BloodHornVital]

Oh, absolutely. We all have individual thoughts about what music resonates.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

12 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

You’re not wrong, Life is Killing Me would certainly be the band at their most accessible. That whole Gothic metal/rock thing kind of started with Bloody Kisses, an album I enjoy more than October Rust, but less than World Coming Down. Actually the debut is radically different to the aforementioned Gothic metal/rock sound. It’s kind of like a doomy Carnivore. 

I never saw Type O live but I did catch Carnivore one time, and now every time I listen to SD&H it takes me right back inside CBGB's 40 years ago. So while I like SD&H I think of it separately from the rest of the Type O catalogue. It's like the bridge between Carnivore and the Type O we all know and love today.

Cool thing about Type O is the records have so many layers of sound thanks to Josh that you can hear something new you've never heard before almost every time on an album you've heard 500 times already. I think I like Dead Again so much because it's an angry record, Pete was clearly fucking pissed off when he wrote that shit. At first I latched onto the song Tripping a Blind Man and didn't really connect with the rest of it. But FA made a comment about Dead Again one time a couple of years ago in a Type O discussion, so I threw it on and really listened closely and I had my epiphany. I was like holy shit this is Pete's Abbey Road, it's his masterpiece. Each song has at least like 3 or 4 distinctly different parts, the whole thing really flows together like the Abbey Road medley on side 2. Not a single wasted second on there that doesn't add to the whole and I can't honestly say that about any other Type O record.

As far as the gothic metal thing is concerned I don't know why I as a rabid goat filth lover like gothic so much or let's say I dabble in the heavier end of gothic at least. Type O, early Paradise Lost (up through Icon) and even Draconian are all bands I enjoy very much. Even early Swallow the Sun had some gothic moments I enjoy. To me it all goes back to Celtic Frost, they were the first metal band I was aware of to cross the line into gothic territory at times and Tom had the female vocals and stuff back in the 80's, and I totally loved that shit. TGF can do no wrong in my book.

And of course we can't forget the Sisters of Mercy who released 3 gothic rock albums between 1985 and 1990. Not a metal band obviously, but they were heavy and metalheads definitely listened to them, they influenced a lot of metal bands. I'm completely ambivalent about Cradle though because I haven't heard enough to even form an opinion. I just know people seem to love 'em or hate 'em.

[RelentlessOblivion]

CoF are fine through to Cruelty and the Beast, after that I really lost interest. Honestly gothic metal has never really been something which appealed to me, you already rattles off the only other bands in the style which I find palatable.

[BloodHornVital]

Yea, keyboards definitely add depth to Type-O. There’s a sense of harmony with the guitar and bass lines. Great stuff undeniably. Overall gothic metal is a hit and miss kind of thing. I don’t actively seek or want to know more about it. My dying bride and Paradise Lost certainly have some nice albums of course. I don’t know how CoF relates to gothic metal though. They play black metal, right? Same with Dimmu Borgir. Lot of the "goths” back in school days listened to those two bands. I guess their image suits that environment and they were and are popular to this day.

[JonoBlade]

On 1/21/2024 at 7:16 AM, BloodHornVital said:

Someone here with a deeper knowledge may feel free to correct me, but I recognize Life is killing me as TON’s most mainstream album at the height of their career. It’s just so catchy and enjoyable and has a lot of nostalgic value personally. I keep learning new insights about it as well, like the song Todd’s ship gods is based on Peter visiting his father’s grave for the first time after several years since his father passed away. The man wasn’t even at his father’s funeral because of personal reasons. 

Dead again I remember having good reviews when it came out, but I guess their fame was settling down by that time and it has a more doomy atmosphere without the gothic feeling their earlier albums had, which is why it didn’t catch on so much. I can see why GoatmasterGeneral likes that one. 

I’ve never actually bothered to check TON’s earlier albums prior to October rust. I mean I’ve listened to a track here and there but never spinned one whole album through. The four albums October rust, World coming down, Life is killing me and Dead again have always felt all the Type-O-Negative I ever needed. 

October Rust was Type O's commercial/mainstream peak. That record was specifically written with "getting chicks" in mind, after the success of Bloody Kisses (BK being the only one to go platinum and Roadrunner's most successful record at the time). In my view Type O were coasting at a similar level from World Coming Down through to the end. I wouldn't say LiKM is a mainstream album, nor at the height of their career.

For a long time I considered Dead Again their best album, for all the reasons @GoatmasterGeneral mentioned. However, more recently I find Life is Killing Me to be the unsung hero of the catalog. The closing tracks Anaesthesia thru The Dream is Dead are just perfect. 

But that is the power of the green man. Any of those albums could be the best.... except October Rust; but even that one I might give another go some day.

It's ironic that October Rust was the current album when I first heard Type O (my guess some time in 1997)  and I liked it well enough then, but Bloody Kisses was the dog's bollocks ....I've just played it too many times for it to be my favourite anymore.