Bloody Kisses (1993)
Rating: 8/10
Comicbookcore for Sabbath fans.
It takes quite alot of nerve to stick a statement that reads "Don't Mistake Lack of Talent for Genius" on the back of your album. Type O Negative have done just that on their 3rd album, BLOODY KISSES, but I'm not sure if what they have is nerve or just a penchant for honest advertising.
What they have done here however, is hone their sound - a slow industrial grind abetted by steely guitars, cheesy keyboards, and vocals that wouldn't sound out of place prophesying the Apocalpyse - down to something that's unmistakably and uniquely their own. It's also the kind of thing that you're either going to love or hate.
This is music that wouldn't find a place anywhere except at the fringes of heavy metal, where being as shockingly misogynistic/sexist/hate-mongering/ ludicrous/assinine as you can is often the best virtue you can sport (see Aerosmith, Kiss, all Black Metal etc). The thing about Type O Negative is that they are fully aware of this, and exploit that consumerist mechanism for all its worth. BLOODY KISSES then, is a career peak for them, a brilliant marriage of musical perversity, sex and serious camp that's played as much for laughs as it is for lucre.
The album's opening salvo of "Machine Screw" (self-explanatory), the pop-Sabbath mini-trilogy "Christian Woman" and "Black No.1," a halloween homage to vampiric femme fatales, is one that you're not likely to forget once you've heard it. Type O Negative pick out and serve up heavy metal cliches with a sardonic, comic-book humour and an unerring sense for doom-laden melody and soaring harmonies.
The album continues like a musical circus, dragging old trolls out from under their bridges and putting them on display for the gawking fascinated rabble, sending-up everything from King Kong ("Fay Wray Come Out and Play"), hardcore music ("We Hate Everyone") to the nauseating Seals & Croft radio classic "Summer Breeze".
As the album winds down however, it also loses some potency, with a number of filler-like "straight" songs that only serve to expose Type O Negative's musical dependence on genres like goth and industrial. So maybe BLOODY KISSES isn't consistently brilliant, but then even geniuses have their off days, don't they?
Gerald Tan 1997
Comments about the Album or Review
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Visitor's Comments:
FROM: Christon13@hotmail.com (christina Boyd)
FROM: morganb@execpc.com (Morgan Barker)
FROM: tigerty9@aol.com (Rebecca Rhea)
FROM: TYPE O SNOW (DRUID)
DATE: Wed, 3 Mar 1999
SUBJECT: rock on
COMMENTS: Type o Negative Rocks. The love Aerosmith too, but you can not put Aerosmith
and Type O in the same catcatory. It just dosn't work. T.O N. rocks!!!!!
Rock-n-Roll for ever. As long as it's not that percky shit that the other bands
are playing now.
DATE: Sat, 2 Jan 1999
SUBJECT: bloody kisses...my own review
COMMENTS: the metamorphosis.............a very close description of the industrial goth
gone romantic goth band known as Type O Negative
bloody kisses is the first album made by type o that integrates its romanticgoth
sounds putting the mystically dark woman on a pedastal yet somehow shunning her
for leaving.
october rust softens even more to almost be classified as a gothic lovesong with
a hue of rock imbedded in the beat. In a way i could say that Bloody Kisses is
the young adult stage of the bands maturing sound. Yet October rust is most
definately a middle age sound with remakes of such songs as Neil Young's
Cinnamon Girl which seems to appeal to even to my late 40's mother.
Type O's Imagery has become another target for their transition going from the
somewhat technocratic setting to a much more earthy elemental feel.
DATE: Sat, 19 Dec 1998
SUBJECT: Bloody Kisses ....
COMMENTS: Bloody Kisses is the best damned album Type O has ever made , and if you have a
problem with it , you can kiss my Royal ASS !
Visitor's Comments:
DATE: 14/10/98
SUBJECT: TON FOR LIFE!!!!
COMMENTS: BLOODY KISSES IS A MASTERPIECE!!!!!
"CAN'T LOSE YOU" IS THE DARKEST SONG EVER CREATED!!!!!!
THEY ARE THE GREATEST BAND EVER!!!!!!!
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