Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me (2003)^{Release ID: 938}

Type O Negative set themselves up as the leading example of what gothic metal should sound like early on in their career.  Many gothic bands have tried to emulate them or use them as a basis for what to sound like, but this doesn't mean Type O Negative always had success.  At one point, the went more mainstream, and some Type O Negative fans have been unfair to this album, ignoring it.  I'm not that type, however, as I embrace branching out.  Life Is Killing Me is considered the album that stopped the golden era of this band, but "golden" and "good" are still two different things.

Right from the start, the album makes a point of noisy production, doomy moments and punk undertones, so we already know what we're getting. Life Is Killing Me lyrically tackles many of the negative thoughts of Steele's mind at the time, dealing with mental instability and a midlife crisis, but the strengthened focus on alternative and pop structures gives this album a much more cheerful disposition.  We get a switch between gothic metal, alternative metal and rock, and gothic doom taking up most of the album, with occasional deathrock bursts with I Like Goils and Angry Itch serving as excellent examples.  Type O Negative never got over punk.

Despite the switch between these three major focal points, we still get some minimal but effective moments of creativity, such as that weird, surreal and repetitive riff in the backdrop of Gimme That.  That's easily one of my favorite aspects of the album.  However, because of the poppier structures, there's less of a romantic and atmospheric approach.  And it's not like we get very many amazing metal solos.

Type O Negative made it perfectly clear with this album that they still had the ability to deliver some fantastic melodies with their production style, but in the effort to go mainstream they forgot to be as atmospheric in their style as in the production.  But that's the only strength of TON that's absent from this album.  Otherwise, this is a perfectly fine Type O Negative album that will give a fan what's asked for.