A Review of the Timeless Goth Rock Album “October rust”

The Band, Type O Negative, Courtesy of Type O Negative

Most songs explore romance, but Type O Negative does not merely explore it, it wallows in it. The four-member band that started in 1989 has a plethora of songs within their discography that explores this phenomenon. The clearest example is “October Rust” (1996): an album both provocative and poetic, horny and sincere, and most importantly, an album built on contradictions.

It sounds less like an album written by a rock band talking about love and more like some forest dwelling wanderer writing epic poems to a divine goddess worthy of his devotion.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in “Be My Druidess”, where bassist Peter Steele trades modern romance for imagery of pagan ritual, woodland desire, and outright worship. Type O Negative’s music doesn’t shy away from taking their own sweet time letting the listeners do more than just dip their feet into music. Rather, the listener submerges their entire body and absorbs the handcrafted mellifluous instrumentals, for which the keyboardist Josh Silver and the influence of Pink Floyd is to be credited. 

What strikes me wasn’t the topics the album hovered over. Obsession, longing, and devotion are practically the ABCDs of love songs out there. However, the songs by Type O Negative sounds almost animalistic and folklorish in a sense. Groetsquley, the band even features choruses explicitly stating they want to make their love interest ejaculate until she is unconscious while also associating pagan mythology figures such as druidesses. It almost felt like Peter Steele was unwilling to abandon a feeling until he had excavated every corner of it.

The album isn’t just a long love letter to women, though. As Peter Steele exposes, his personal wounds, such as death, are also featured in the album, with no song other than “Red Water’s” ability to communicate Christmas Mourning as a clear example. A song about a supposedly joyful event ends up detailing the loneliness underneath it all and more so than that, how the earth keeps revolving. 

“October Rust” Album Cover, Courtesy of Type O Negative

Along with such songs, the album includes songs such as “My girlfriend’s Girlfriend”, which is arguably the weakest song of the album. Here, Steele talks about being in a threesome, referring to the romance as a Meat Triangle, which invites the audience to laugh in absurdity, rather than feel moved.

But my absolute favorite has to be the song, “Love You to Death”, embodying the common themes characteristic of the album. Whenever you’d expect the song to settle, it unveiles another melodic flourish. Perhaps, the situation in which I first discovered the song might contribute to my fanaticism towards it. During the summer of 2024 I couldn’t sleep because I had received my exam results and failed in 2 subjects, leading to a catastrophic pile up of backlogs and existential anxiety. I already had atmospheric artists on my playlist such as Nine Inch Nails and Sigur Ros to put me to sleep. But, in the middle of the night, I felt a chill down my spine–no, not because of the air conditioning. A synth-like melody drifted through my earphones, followed by a bass guitar which grabbed my attention. The unexpected seven minutes where I decided to listen to the song blindly without revealing the artist or song title was unbelievable. 

When I rediscovered this song months later, I was driving my car down winding backroads through a raging thunderstorm. To clear my mind after some emotional turmoil, I played this song to match the emotional terror of the weather. And, I felt less like driving on the road, and more like floating on a comfortable but fast bird gliding through the night sky. These two emotionally charged moments cemented “Love You to Death" as my absolute favorite song of all time. 

In a time when rock music had entered a rather awkward phase with Grunge fading after Cobain’s death, and pop music and rap taking over as being the dominant force, a lot of bands adopted a cynical or aggressive tone. Prominent bands such as Tool, Weezer, Rage Against the Machine all represent this shift. Differently, Type O Negative developed a little world of their own filled with autumn leaves, church organs, self-loathing, and most importantly, reproductive fluids. 

Three decades after its release, October Rust remains a strange anomaly. An album capable of being vulgar and beautiful, humorous and devastating, all within the span of a few songs. Since first hearing “Love You to Death” on a sleepless summer night, I have spent years searching for another album that captures the same haunting sense of devotion, longing, and poetry. So far, the search continues.