Sighing synthetic notes herald a haunting piano, conjuring a visage of an abandoned, dilapidated cathedral, its vaults and nave sunken and exposed to wuthering heights as a deep, draconian voice summons, “In her place, one hundred candles burning,” setting the somber and gothic tone of Type O Negative’s ode to dark passion “Love You to Death.” It is this image, this space that haunts and arouses a form of crazed love, a love that is an obsession, jealous, cruel and destructive like the savage oceans. Peter Steele willingly dives into the deep, violent waters, crooning, “her salty sweat drips from her breast,” the Rs in “drips” and “breast” rolling and rumbling from within him. When he sings, “Her hips move and I can feel what they’re saying, swaying,” there is no doubt that his knowledge of her is of an unlawful nature and that this language stirs from within, the beast that hungers for pleasure and flesh few will ever know. When Steele sings of the beast within, a rippling guitar rips through the darkness, enveloping the listener within its ravenous undertow.
The songs unfolds dramatically as heavy, velvet curtains come crushing down, pushing the air out of the space. The guitar slashes and whines like a bonesaw, spiteful, serrated, and doom-laden, each strike a scream, each laceration an entreaty, each chord an act of self-flagellation. Steele’s voice splits the wall of vicious chords, the words “Black lipstick stains” sinking deep as if the stains remain upon his lips instead of the glass of red wine, tattooed upon the memories like a toxin that remains long after a sickly, sweet embrace. And when he sings, “I am your servant, may I light your cigarette,” you see it’s spidery veins piercing and penning the blackened heart, his mind poisoned against all rationality. The singer is enraptured, smitten, willing, and dangerous. This time, her lips move, a contrast to the language borne of copulation, moving to something decidedly more direct, something more sinister, words of persuasion, words of temptation, words of violence, words that seduce, steal, and deceive, a dark goddess praying and preying. Indeed, by the third verse, Steele exists only to serve her, on his knees, he “beg[s] to serve, [her] wish is [his] law,” asking his immortal beloved to “close [her] eyes and let [him] love [her] to death.” The transformation is complete- flesh to instrument, blunt, blind and deathly devoted.
Finally, the lead guitar begins to howl, hemorrhaging liberally as a pinning voice sighs, “Let me love you to death,” the timbre laced with mourning and remorse, the spindly piano and ersatz notes resonating, dancing in and out of the dark, electric vortex as the mantra is repeated over and over again in everlasting misery. It is not until Steele returns, lamenting, “Am I good enough for you?,” that the song begins to wind down, his question a supplication born out of doubt, a sinking stone that pulls within, unraveling the fiercest of wills, melting the adamantium to its very center. The final, “Am I” is loaded with so much fervor and agony that the listener takes upon the ardor as his/her very own reservation, the shipwreck anchored to the soul, the passion sinking into the very core. Like Steele, the listener is stripped of the maelstrom in which his/her deepest passions are buried, left exposed to endure in a world where his/her object of obsession remains worlds away, a reverie that poisons his/her waking dreams, spilling into corporeal world. Now, everything is stripped of color, faded to grey. Such is the power of music…
Madness + Passion 