And you hit a wall that hard you become quite disillusioned,” Hickey considers. He went to Catholic high school and at that point he was not doing well, physically or psychologically with addiction. These include the ambiguous religious imagery in the likes of Profits of Doom (the original planned title of the album) and An Ode To Locksmiths, as well explicitly anti-abortion sentiments in the forementioned These Three Things. And then there are the songs coloured by the frontman’s then recent rediscovery of his Catholic faith. Halloween In Heaven was inspired by the passing of Pantera guitarist and Steele’s good friend, Dimebag Darrell. What kind of an asshole does that? I was working out and in good shape. I started doing cocaine when I was 35 years old. The opener and title-track was a straightforward look at its writer’s continuing struggle with addiction and relapse, kicking things off with the lines, ‘The first to admit I'm the doomed drug addict/ And I always will be, hey man, don't follow me.’ It’s intended as a salutary lesson: as the man himself explained to Metal Hammer, “One of my messages to our fans is that it’s better to learn from the mistakes of others than your own. Lyrically, the album wasn’t the most focused of the band’s catalogue. It wasn't really meant to be but using all the techniques that we'd built up over two decades of playing together, it definitely has all the tricks in the bag,” nods Hickey. And there are a few new tricks like the almost prog-like complexity of the epic 14-minute-plus These Three Things.

In others it revisits the gothic lustre of their vampiric mid-period.

In parts it has the metallic drive of Steele’s former band Carnivore (who he had resurrected prior to recording this album) and Type O’s rough and raw debut Slow, Deep And Hard. While it was never intended as Type O Negative’s swan song, Dead Again serves the purpose well. The musical results were impressive, though. We did that for like five days a week for about eight months. We'd leave about midnight and I'm sure Peter would stay up then sleep all day and be up again about two hours before we picked him up to start the cycle again. “We gained some good ground for two or three hours then it would get out of control and it would usually end up in a drunken argument of some sort. “At that point in time the drinking would start at 7pm when we entered the rehearsal studio,” Hickey recalls. It yielded fruit but, with the way the writing sessions frequently degenerated, it was also an exhausting way of making an album. As well as adding what Hickey describes as a more vibrant feel to the album, this rather more improvisational songwriting process contributed to the sprawling scope of the album, with many of the songs approaching or passing the 10-minute mark and taking the form of multi-part suites. The frontman and bassist was still the primary creative engine but this time out the songs grew and developed out of a process of face-to-face jamming.ĭrummer Johnny Kelly also played live in the studio for the first time – the band having used a drum machine for recording since the departure of Sal Abruscato after their breakthrough third album Bloody Kisses. Where previously Steele would largely write alone and present nearly complete songs to be hammered out with his bandmates, this was a more collaborative approach. This dynamic did help create a uniquely loose and energetic vibe for a Type O Negative album. We had to go and pick him up from his house, take him to the rehearsal studio and we’d just start playing in front of each other.” At that point he wasn't even driving any more. “Peter was really bad at the time, I wasn't too great either, but he was really bad. “It was the most difficult album to put together,” Hickey recalls. And, by the time the sessions for Dead Again started, he was still very much a mess. I was a complete mess.”Ī spell in the psych ward at Kings County Hospital and rehab for his burgeoning addictions to alcohol and cocaine failed to straighten the singer out. The intruders never came, the fucking cocksuckers. I would lie under the bed wearing night vision goggles waiting for people to come in – and they never did. I put a sign outside my house encouraging burglars and left my front door open. I used to walk the streets in Soviet and Nazi uniforms. He continued: “I tried to mask the pain by drowning myself in cocaine and alcohol until I thought I was the Pope.

Typ o negative poster