Type O Negative’s posing for a photograph in 2007

“The death of my mother was the worst thing that ever happened to me. For a year my motto was, ‘Why should I play, why should I eat, for what?’”: The darkness and despair of late Type O Negative frontman and goth metal icon Peter Steele

In May 13, 2005, the world of heavy music was shaken to its very foundations by rumours that founding Type O Negative frontman and bassist Pete Steele was dead. The only clue as to the news’ veracity was an enigmatic image posted on the official Type O Negative web site: an illustrated tombstone that read read ‘Peter Steele, 1962-2005’.

For anyone who knew anything about Pete Steele or his music, the understated epitaph spoke volumes. It said, simply: ‘Free At Last’. It was a tragically fitting postscript on a famously cheerless existence. Sure, Pete Steele was a musical visionary whose trademark baritone and gallows humour fused a language of love and loss with gothically-tinged, Sabbath-loving sounds to create one of the 90s most successful yet inimitable metal bands. But Pete Steele’s life was also one plagued by personal loss, bouts of severe depression, and an outlook so exuberantly free of any kind of optimism, that all anyone could really do was laugh at it. Not out of ridicule, but in knowing agreement that you haven’t lost everything if you still have your sense of humour.

The news wasn’t without its sepulchral portents. Type O Negative’s autumn 2004 tour had just been cancelled due to a medical exam that revealed certain ‘anomalies’ in Steele’s health according to a statement released by the band’s management. So it was a relief when Type O drummer Johnny Kelley stated in a February, 2005 update that, “there really isn’t much to report other than he’s doing fine and his health is improving daily.” But it suddenly looked as if the sticksman had spoken too soon, and the metal world was left with only Type O’s last album to make sense of the loss, 2003’s aptly-titled Life Is Killing Me. Eerily, it seemed to forecast its creator’s ostensibly gloomy demise with songs like I Don’t Wanna Be Me and indeed, The Dream Is Dead.

“Nah, that was all bullshit,” laughs Steele in his thick, low-octave Brooklyn drawl. “The tour was cancelled because of internal problems in the band. It would not be correct for me to get into because of my relationship with the guys. That was not my doing but somebody had to come up with some excuse. Of course, being the biggest member of the band I was the biggest target, so I’m getting these emails like ‘I hope you get better’ and then when it got out I was alive it was, ‘I hope you fucking die asshole.’”

Type O Negative posing against a black background — As Steele tells it, the tombstone was meant to be a prank hatched by keyboardist Josh Silver to announce the end of Type O’s relationship with longtime label Roadrunner Records and their subsequent signing to SPV (“They’ve always treated us fairly but friendship doesn’t pay the bills,” he says of the move away from Roadrunner). The hitch? Silver’s original idea was to depict four tombstones – one for each member of the band, aka ‘The Drab Four’. Steele can’t explain why only his tombstone was used, but not everyone was amused. Among them, a judge who Steele is legally bound to see from time to time due to what he describes as ‘legal problems.’

“He happens to be a Type O Negative fan and he sent the cops to my house to see if I was dead or not,” says Steele, chuckling. “I told Josh, ‘man, you have no idea what you’ve just done – you’ve just upset the New York State Supreme Court! I think it’s fucking funny too but tell me if you’re going to do that sometime!’ And then the judge is like, ‘do you think this is funny?’ I had to plead the fifth,” he laughs.