Type O Negative October Rust Legacy Album Review

Type O Negative
October Rust
Road Runner Records
1996

​Despite the awkward humorous intro in which we're subjected to the sound of an amplifier humming quietly to itself, we're treated to a brief thank-you note from the band, taking the time to say thanks for buying the album. I like that, but it can only be done once, imagine if every album had it on? Tedium ad facetiis. Track three on this long list of titles or non-titles as it is more accurately sampled, is the first song. A slow and chunky bass guitar combo waves us in with a ballad of sensual and drastic urgency.


Track four ups the pace and brings a heavy metal sounding riff to the edge, “Be My Druidess” takes a full emotional and physical focus on the female psyche, it's flirting with all the women fans and giving us guys some nice imagery to consider. It's a bit full on but that's the point of this band, they get to their point. With rose thorns adorning the album sleeve, the prickles are on the back of the neck and in the palm of the hand as we try to hold on to those feelings.


More slow and thought-out melodies sweep away the brief pulse of high energy and “Red Water” takes us to a gothic and dark Christmas scene, in which the subject of the song sits with his demons on a lonely and cold night. Perhaps a common setting for the gloomy hearted wanderers of the angst driven age, this can tell a different and sadder story of those truly alone at this time.


Fun and jumpy, “My Girlfriend's Girlfriend” relights the candle with a tongue in cheek homage to the S&M scene, with references to fetish imagery set to a happy melody, the keyboard driven verses fling us into a knees up with a twisted angle. Appealing to the male fantasy of having two girlfriends, willing of course, the song is a little silly but it has a good rhythm and a fun aspect that makes it really enjoyable.


More ballads and fantasy imagery are called into the story as”Die with Me” and “Burnt Flowers Fallen” depict sad and sorrowful exchanges of love and sadness, musical tragedy with a hint of glamour make a strange sensation, appealing to the symbolic and melancholy of emotional longing and the deep soul searching asked of us by mentions of our mortality, love becomes the key element in the reasons why death is sad. Perhaps losing love feels like dying and in order to move on, a part of us must die.


Perhaps the best album by Type O Negative, October Rust draws on a deeper sense of humanity than the other offerings by this band, and since the passing of the singer and bass player, Peter Steele, the dark and morbid lines in his voice begin to take on a much deeper sense of irony and sadness than they did at the time of recording.