(I'd be especially interested in
BRTD's take on this subject.)
Brooklyn-based gothic/doom metal act Type O Negative has long been one of my favorite bands, and probably always will be, despite the 2010 passing of bassist and lead songwriter Peter Steele. TON had long had a reputation for writing politically incorrect songs, dating back to the days of TON's precursor band Carnivore, a New York hardcore/crossover band with songs like "
Race War":
This tendency towards extreme political incorrectness carried through into the later Type O Negative material, such as this 1991 track "
Der Untermensch":
Type O Negative later disavowed racism, claiming they wrote tracks like those for shock value, and toured Europe with left-wing punk acts to drive that point home.
But fifteen years later, Peter Steele did a stint in Riker's Island in New York on drug possession and emerged a changed man, embracing the Polish Catholicism he'd grown up with. Along the way Type O recorded a new album.
Dead Again, and for a lot of fans it was a return to musical form. But there was also questionable content that suggested an anti-Semitic point-of-view.
Consider the track "
Profits of Doom", which suggests a pretty brazen anti-Semitic angle, and not necessarily one that can be chalked up to black humor or an attempt to outrage through anti-political correctness:
This is more expressly spelled out in the track "
These Three Things", which begins as a strange anti-abortion screed but ends in invoking the same sort of peculiar philo-anti-Semitism one finds in, for instance, evangelical doomsayers like John Hagee. Peter Steele seems to be suggesting that the Jews need to be converted for Christ to return:
Now, I don't really care either way; I think it's unfortunate that Steele re-converted to Christianity altogether, so the particulars of that newfound faith don't bother me. And I can certainly deal with political incorrectness in music, though it doesn't necessarily appeal to be strongly, either. I think that
Dead Again, and especially those tracks I posted, are some of the strongest material they ever released, so of course I'll continue to listen to them regardless.
But what should one make of this? It's not
humorous, per se, and TON were known for being sickly funny. But then, the sort of apocalyptic Zionism these songs seem to express aren't usually found in Catholicism, at least as far as I know.
