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Type O Negative - October Rust
| Sputnikmusic |
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It’s often hard to find beauty in metal, probably because in most cases it is not supposed to be present. The purpose of a metal album is to kick your *** for the majority of its length while usually incorporating a requisite ballad/quasi-ballad either to show off an introspective side or more likely, to sell more records. Aside from the occasional dabble in sensitivity, we all know that metal is designed to pump fists and crush skulls. Whether the majority of bands achieve this is debatable, but we know a metal album is not supposed to RELAX you. The 1996 release October Rust from Type O Negative does just that. To put it more clear, if the lyrical content didn’t involve blood thirsty werewolves, odes to druidic orgies, haunting demons, suicide, murder suicide, and arson, I would put half of this CD on a iPod playlist for my 3 year old daughter to fall asleep to. Normally, I would argue that if a metal album could put a child to sleep instead of scaring the living crap out of them, it wouldn’t be effective. This is not the case here. I have always maintained the greatest metal acts are the ones that can effectively incorporate a strong sense of melody to compliment the power. The first time I heard “Black Number One” off of 1993’s Bloody Kisses,” I didn’t give them much thought, except for the fact that these guys were something incredibly strange and trying really hard to sound and act like tough goths. I never heard the second half of “Christian Woman” from the same album over the three years before their next release, so I had a pigeon holed opinion of this band for quite some time. At the time, I had no idea these imposing dudes from NY would turn out to produce one of the most melodic metal album ever released....full text |
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| Ultimate-guitar |
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Sound: October Rust maintains some of the elements of Bloody Kisses but overall takes the band's sound in a new direction, moving away from the guitar driven, 10 minute tracks of it's predecessor and moving towards shorter songs with a stronger emphasis on keyboards, guitar effects, and atmospherics. Aside from the progression of the band's sound, the CD has a much more consistent pacing than Bloody Kisses. Rather than throw a fast, humorous song like "We Hate Everyone" between a mid-tempo track like "Set Me On Fire" and a dirgeful, depressing ballad like "Bloody Kisses," October Rust slows down the tempo several songs at a time, clumping the slower songs together and only occasionally picking up the pace with songs like "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" and "Cinnamon Girl." Overall the band sounds much tighter this time around and the result is a CD that sounds more focused and keeps the listener more interested in what happens next with each song. // 8 Lyrics and Singing: The lyrics on October Rust deal with the same themes of love and death as those on Bloody Kisses, but without such a blunt delivery. They are just as somber as ever, but written in such a fashion that they actually sound like lyrics as opposed to sounding like angry love letters with background music. As can be expected, October Rust has it's share of tongue-in-cheek humor ("My Girlfriend's Girlfriend") and Peter Steele's morbid, "almost too serious to be funny" humor, such as in the song "Red Water." Overall, the lyrics seem much more thought-out and are much better written this time around. Lyrically, the band took quite a step forward from their previous work without sacrificing any of the things that made their lyrics enjoyable to begin with. // 10...full text |
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| Webvis |
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I said in the review for BLOODY KISSES that even geniuses have their off-days. Well, OCTOBER RUST is just that... one long, dry, painfully booooring off-day. When track #1 of an album is half a minute of total silence, and track #2 consists of the band members snickering and asking you if you enjoyed that "little joke", you know you're in trouble. And true enough, that ominously unfunny schoolboy gaff just paves the way for an album that sees Type O Negative totally devoid of the sly humour that made BLOODY KISSES such a perverse little masterpiece. The keyboards on this album have turned all heavy, ambient and orchestral (a sure sign of soul-sapping banality) and the sound is altogether formulaic. Most of OCTOBER RUST in fact sounds like Paradise Lost spoofing Danzig, eschewing traditional satanic rock-outs for proto-primeval dirges with pagan, back-to-nature sensibilities. If it sounds ridiculous, IT IS. And while tunes like "Burnt Flowers Fallen," "Green Man," "In Praise of Bacchus" and the staggeringly bad "Be My Druidess" may prove of passing interest to professional gardeners and new age tree-huggers, one suspects even they may be driven mad by the remorseless monotony of the music. To sum up this thematic colouration, I have two words, if you'll pardon my horticultural lingo: Horse Shit. The odd stabs at variety also miscarry. "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" sounds like an outtake from BLOODY KISSES rejected because of lyrics like "we must be quite a sight/in our meat triangle/all tangled/wow." And the clumsy attempt to repeat the success of the "Summer Breeze" cover on BLOODY KISSES by turning out one of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" simply shows that Type O Negative have forgotten one fundamental basic of comedy - a good joke is only played once, do it twice and not only is it not funny, you're basically just saying you've run out of ideas. Back to the drawing board, guys....full text |
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