Tuesday March 14, 2007 was a banner day for the heavy music community - a new Type O Negative record, the first since 2003’s Life is killing Me was released. Type O fans were uneasy during the interim because rumors were going around that Pete (singer, songwriter, bass player) was dead (rumors not quelled by the mock-up of his tombstone that was the only page of the Type O website for most of 2005), or had a terminal illness. However, in recent months, the site, though not very informative, has been up and running, and the new record came out right on schedule. So, it looked like everything was good, and Pete had just been avoiding people - something not that out-of-the-ordinary for him. And other Type O records had taken almost as long to come out. So everything must have been fine, right?

On my way home from work I stopped and picked it up, and after a while it started to sound good on my car stereo. It took me by surprise because Type O, who once described their music as “dirge-core,” is known for long, slow, complicated songs, and the new record is very uptempo. Not happy - it's about as miserable as ever - but fast enough to remind me that Pete was once in a punk band.

For the next few days, though I listened to nothing else, I didn’t get past the first few songs. I mosttly listen to CDs in my car, but my commute is short, and this
is my Shadow-Phonic sound system:

so I don’t do much listening at home. By Thursday I had elected to dig deeper, and check out some of the later tracks on the album. I was almost at work that morning, which isn’t a good time or place for me anyway, when I heard Pete say something about god that sounded sincere. My bullshit-o-meter went off for a minute, but I quickly recovered. This is Type O I thought, It’s just Pete making fun. But then I heard the refrain. I turned it up and listened more closely. It was not only a religious song, but a religious anti-abortion song. I was livid.

When I got home from work that night, I did some digging. Pete hadn’t disappeared for those four years - at least not from the NYC court system. His coke habit had gotten the better of him, and he spent some time in rehab. Not only that, his girl had cheated on him, he beat her up, and then went to prison. And in prisons and catholic countries, you’ll always find the same thing - god.

Pete, once a vocal atheist, had found god and become a practicing catholic. He claims that his recent experiences reminded him of his mortality, and that he had started to hope there was a god. That’s a paraphrase, but “hope” is the word he used (in Decibel Magazine), which, of course, makes perfect sense because even the most dishonest of christians can’t find anything that approximates evidence for the existence of god or Jesus or anything else even roughly spiritual. So, based on his desire for there to be a god (and xero evidence) he decided to splatter his religious (read: delusional) shit all over that most austere of heavy music edifices - the Type O catalog.

First the 2000 (and 2004) election was stolen by an imbecile who believes that 2000 isn’t just a year, but that it’s one third the age of the earth (it’s 14 billion years old, for those of you who don’t know), and now our most sarcastic and cynical atheists are being infected with the Jesus Virus (Virus atrox horridus), and it must be stopped! The next time you see a bible, burn it! The next time Jehovah’s witnesses come to your door, invite them in and read to them from The God Delusion! And the next time Jesus talks to you, take your anti-psychotic medications!

The real tragedy here is that a musically interesting record has been rendered stupid and unlistenable by this idiocy. The moral of the story? Wash your hands, people. You don’t want that virus.