Review by Rexorcist for Type O Negative - The Origin of the Feces: Not Live at Brighton Beach (1992)

I've officially become a fan of Type O Negative upon my revisits of Bloody Kisses and October Rust, as well as my exposure to World Coming Down and The Least Worst of Type O Negative.  I'm in love with their reliance on presence and personality over sticking with a scene, because they didn't really have much of a "scene" to stick to when they came out.  They helped invent goth metal, so they were very unique.  They also became controversial for their gruesome lyrical content, which showed heavily on their debut, Slow Deep and Hard, which mingled goth metal, doom metal and even bits of crossover thrash.  Now it seemed a little awkward but good at first, so they took the personality aspect to the next level and recorded a fake live album to show off that they were a black comedy band in a sense.

Basically, Type O negative's debut was when they were introducing their style, but The Origin of the Feces is the album where they were introducing their personality, and it didn't really get in the way of the music because the parody aspects were still handled in a serious manner to help the album.  Peter Steele feels like a real rocker and a metalhead when speaking out to the fake audience.  There's less of a drifting doom effect in this 40-minute album than the hour-long debut, and the production technique was replaced with a noisier and punkish sound that perfectly fused the doom and gothic elements with the crossover thrash bits that felt awkward on the debut.  Because of this, every great song from the original album is made more consistent, less awkward and easier to get behind.  This really isn't an album for diehard doom fans because of the noise; no, it's an album for fans of Type O Negative's personality as well as their music.  And if you have the extended edition at your disposal, you at least have to listen to the GORGEOUS doom metal cover of Black Sabbath's Paranoid.  It's more haunting and surreal than the fast-paced heavy metal original.  I honestly prefer it.

I finally have an ACTUAL controversial opinion: this is one of Type O negative's best albums.  This is boldness with a beautiful noise-production style and excellent flow, making this an improved variant of their debut if you ask me.  The joke might be unfunny or even pointless to some, but this sophomore work isn't so drawn out, each song has its own identity, and the noisier sound and mixing makes everything about the past album feel more natural, as if they finally found a proper ground to work with, removing some smoothness of the doom metal for this sound.  Once the joke wears off, there's personality, because this album really does feel like a live album with a very comedic side, like the cricket sounds at the end.  If only the original version included that incredible Paranoid cover, then I might've given it a 100.