Late Type O Negative leader Peter Steele was the king of goth metal, but a string of bad luck and personal problems in the 2000s almost brought him down.In 2007, three years before his death, he spoke candidly with Metal Hammer about grief, depression, and what would become Type O Negative’s final album, Dead Again.
Rumors that founding Type O Negative frontman and bassist Pete Steele had died rocked the heavy music world to its core on May 13, 2005. The only hint to the news’ authenticity came from an intriguing image uploaded on the official Type O Negative website: an illustrated tombstone reading ‘Peter Steele, 1962-2005’.
For anyone who knew Pete Steele or his music, the modest epitaph spoke everything. It simply said, ‘Free At Last’. It was a terribly fitting conclusion to a very bleak existence. Sure, Pete Steele was a musical visionary whose signature baritone and gallows humour blended a language of love and loss with gothically-tinged, Sabbath-loving sounds to create one of the 90s most successful yet unique metal bands.
But Pete Steele’s life was also marked by personal tragedy, spells of extreme despair, and an attitude so devoid of optimism that all anyone could do was laugh it off. Not in jest, but in acceptance that you haven’t lost everything if you still have a sense of humor.
The news had some ominous overtones. Type O Negative’s autumn 2004 tour had just been canceled due to a medical exam that discovered various ‘anomalies’ in Steele’s health, according to a statement issued by the band’s management.
So it was reassuring when Type O drummer Johnny Kelley revealed 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.”
However, it appeared that the sticksman spoke too soon, leaving the metal world with only Type O’s final album, 2003’s aptly titled Life Is Killing Me, to help make sense of the loss. It seemed to predict its creator’s purportedly grim demise with songs like I Don’t Wanna.
“Nah, that was all bullshit,” Steele says in a heavy, low-octave Brooklyn drawl. “The tour was canceled due to internal issues within the band. It would not be appropriate for me to participate due to my relationship with the boys.
That was not my fault, but someone had to come up with an excuse. Of course, being the band’s largest member, I was the biggest target, so I was getting emails like ‘I hope you get well’ and then when it was discovered I was still alive, it was ‘I hope you fucking die asshole.'”
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