The latter element manifested not just in the Type O’s choice of covers (Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl,” Seals & Croft’s “Summer Breeze,” an honest-to-god Beatles medley) or in its nickname (“The Drab Four”), but in lush original compositions. The music itself displayed a similar duality, alternating between doom-laden dirges and swirling psychedelia. The song’s ferocity emerges from the band’s hulking exterior and Steele’s lyrical vulnerability, which sounds trapped inside it. (He died of an unrelated aortic aneurysm in 2010.) Two songs-the savage, hook-laden “Everyone I Love Is Dead” and the harrowing and bittersweet “Everything Dies”-tackle that pain by wondering if it’s worth going on without those he’s lost. It’s effectively a concept album about the death of people close to Steele, who by then was dealing with life-threatening addictions of his own. World Coming Down goes even further down this guilt-ridden road. He closes October Rust’s anthemic “Love You to Death” by plaintively asking the object of his affection “Am I good enough for you?”, clearly already believing the answer to be “no.” Steele shared vocal duties with his gifted guitarist Kenny Hickey, who handled the shouty bits over time, this allowed Steele to hone his voice into something not just creepy or sexy but actually romantic, even abject.
Both songs showcase Steele’s distinctive, vampiric baritone, complete with theatrically rolled R’s and overemphasized consonants (“on her milk-white neck- kkh, the devil’s mark- k”). 1,” an affectionate send-up of a goth girl’s beauty regimen that launched the band into the public consciousness, via a striking black-and-white video that received heavy Beavis and Butthead rotation. The best-known of these kick off 1993’s Bloody Kisses: “Christian Woman” explores its subject’s sublimation of sexuality into the crucified body of Christ with all the subtlety of “Ken Russell’s The Devils: The Musical.” It continues with “Black No.
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