Released: March 13, 2007
Type O Negative had rarely sounded this restless. Dead Again starts with Johnny Kelly driving a clipped punk-metal riff while Peter Steele admits another relapse in breathless phrases. Across more than 77 minutes, the record circles addiction, Catholic judgment, dead musicians, and romantic wreckage, yet it keeps moving. How does an album so occupied with death sound this alive?
Kelly is a large part of the answer. Dead Again is the only Type O studio album to feature his live drumming, and the difference goes beyond speed. His snare gives the title track and “Some Stupid Tomorrow” a ragged shove. Short fills redirect the slower sections before the riffs settle into a march. Steele’s bright, chorused bass has room to roam because the beat no longer sounds bolted to a grid.
That looseness changes the long songs. “Tripping a Blind Man” opens with a mini-Moog burst, drops into a blunt Sabbath-shaped riff, then breaks into sections that sound argued into place. Late in the song, Hickey’s guitar follows Steele’s vocal rhythm so closely that it becomes a second voice. “The Profit of Doom” uses the asteroid Apophis as material for an eleven-minute sermon, shifting between a slow crawl, choral vocals, and a quicker surge. Hickey’s ragged upper register cuts across Steele’s bass voice and stops the song from sinking into one long monologue.
“September Sun” makes the same restlessness sound sad. Josh Silver’s piano supports Steele’s restrained opening vocal; then the guitars widen, Hickey takes the higher lines, and the arrangement drifts well beyond the point where the radio edit ends. That long coda matters. The keyboard haze leaves Steele’s grievance hanging after the main song has run out of words.
Steele’s renewed Catholic belief gives Dead Again its most rigid passage. “These Three Things” opens with an explicit anti-abortion declaration and spends more than 14 minutes moving from organ-backed dirge to a brighter guitar passage shaped around a Beatlesque cadence. The music keeps changing, but the lyric has already made up its mind. Steele is preaching here, and the certainty narrows a band that usually thrived on doubt, bad taste and self-mockery.
“Halloween in Heaven” handles grief from the opposite direction. Written after Dimebag Darrell’s death, it names lost rock musicians over a brisk psychedelic rocker, with Tara VanFlower adding a lighter voice to the chorus. The mismatch between mourning and a jaunty melody is awkward, funny, and sincere at the same time. Type O rarely separated those things, and here they leave the collision intact.
Steele’s vocals bind these pieces. His baritone has less velvet around it than it did during the band’s lushest years. He barks through the title track, nearly whispers parts of “September Sun,” then gives Hickey room to answer or take over. Silver’s keyboards have specific jobs too: church tones sharpen the apocalyptic fixation in “The Profit of Doom,” while the organ and bluesy guitar in “An Ode to Locksmiths” turn religious wordplay into crooked barroom Sabbath. Mike Marciano and Silver’s mix keeps Kelly’s snare and cymbals audible even when the guitars and keyboards pile up.
So why does Dead Again sound so alive? Steele is still in the middle of the fight. Kelly’s live kit keeps snapping his confessions back into motion, while Hickey and Silver push the songs away from settled shapes. Shame turns into a joke, grief becomes a singalong, and faith hardens into judgment before Steele can sort any of it out. Every song catches him before he has decided whether he wants forgiveness, punishment, or another drink.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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