I'm adding my personal note to the outpouring that appears to be building on this bit of news:
Peter Steele, front man for Type O Negative died yesterday of (what appears to be) heart failure at the age of 48.
I'm not going to go into a big personal entry on how much Type O Negative influenced me, or meant to me... or any of that shit. Music is personal, and I'm not introspective enough to define EXACT effects of music on me... though it is hard to overstate how important music is in my life.
But Peter was unique. A unique voice and personality. I liked Type O Negative A LOT. I've seen them live and a lot of people (in more than one locale) have walked up to me and said I looked like him. I don't really look that much like Peter, but people cue in on the height and the long hair. And he was well-known enough in metal, goth, and rock and roll circles to be a name people could put to their impression.
Now I'm going to be the same position as people who resemble Elvis I guess.
Anyway, the point of this is not to be super-maudlin or turn anyone onto Peter's work with TON posthumously. If you don't like their music or somber goth-metal (with dark humor served in heavy doses) than there's no sense in changing that. But his work (and humor) meant a lot to me.
Too bad, sincerely. He made a sort of peace with himself in recent times after being quite the tortured soul most of his adult years. He probably had a lot of good music and showmanship left in him, despite the band's constant sarcasm about always being on the verge of breaking up. Josh and Kenny are making noise like TON will still continue but this is one band who definitely will suffer without its first, best voice.
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