Lo and behold the prophetic Red Cross radio advert asking for type o negative blood donations that day. Steele, understandably frustrated, tried to think of something that would link the tattoos with the band’s image as doom mongers gone hardcore. Frustration would strike again when the group discovered that Subzero had also been taken by a local band. They would change the name to Subzero shortly after with the band members also getting matching tattoos with a circle and minus sign. During this time as well, the band had to change their name due to it already being taken by the Flint, Michigan grindcore band. At the time, the band wished to re-record all the material from the demo to which Roadrunner responded with a resounding no. The group hastily recorded a demo entitled None More Negative that would eventually attract the attention of Carnivore’s former label: Roadrunner. All I can say is that I fell in love with the wrong person.” This extreme response would lead to Steele contacting his old Fallout bandmate Silver, to form a new band called Repulsion with guitarist Kenny Hickey and drummer Sal Abruscato with Steele himself again handling bass and vocal duties and Silver on the ebony and ivory.
Filled with self-hate and an unquenchable rage, he said, “October 15, 1989, I slashed my wrists. Shortly after Carnivore’s disbandment, Peter Steele would experience one of the worst things anyone can be acquainted with: his significant other cheated on him. The artistic direction that Steele sought was then kamikazed by an event that is still semi shrouded in mystery but would alter his life and the lives of untold millions.
By this time, Steele had begun to see that playing apocalyptic NY crossover wasn’t satiating his musical appetite. The S/T was and remains a controversial piece of underground metal and the ante was upped even more on 1987’s Retaliation, which saw such family friendly titles as Race War, Jesus Hitler, and S.M.D (Suck My Dick). Compared to most other crossover thrash bands at the time, Carnivore’s self-titled (1985) debut eschewed politics and teenage beer runs in favor of barbaric lyrics involving “fighting, feasting, fucking…” in nearly every track. A few years would pass by in which time Steele would form Carnivore. The group recorded a two track single before breaking up soon after. The Red Hook, Brooklyn native began small with childhood band Fallout, which included his friend from youth: Josh Silver. No matter how you spin the story, the Type O Negative saga begins and ends with Petrus Thomas Ratajczyk, who would come to be known the world over as Peter Steele. Yet, there was still a strong fanbase for a genre that began earlier in the decade that still held a sizable following: gothic metal. Black metal was well into a second wave, the golden age of death metal would see a last great album in the form of None So Vile (1996) before the genre would hibernate for roughly a decade and nu metal was quickly rising to the forefront with bands like Korn and Rage Against the Machine leading the charge. If you wanted the heavy stuff, you still had to tape trade and follow zines. Alt-rock also rose to prominence with the rise of successful young punk adjacent bands like Green Day, Blink-182 and The Offspring. R&B and hip-hop were slowly becoming the next musical zeitgeist. Grunge had been the vogue form of rock for the last couple of years that ended with Kurt Cobain’s exiting of the mortal coil in 1994. Metallica by this point were in the beginning stages of their much maligned Load (1996) /ReLoad (1997) era, which saw them become more rock and less thrash. In 1996, metal was in an interesting and not very promising position.
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