Still putting the lie to the presumption that gothic metal is mordant and humourless, New York's Type O Negative return with Life Is Killing Me, their sixth album of misanthropy, high drama and perversion with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Towering frontman Pete Steele is still, unquestionably, the band's focal point, and here his lyrics are more grotesquely hilarious than ever: "My sex-change operation got botched / My guardian angel fell asleep on the watch / Now all I've got is a Barbie-doll crotch" he growls on the furious "Angry Inch", a Frankenstein's monster with miserably low-self esteem. Musically, this is pretty accessible stuff, with little of the brutal, thrashy heaviness of Type O's early material: "(We Were) Electrocute" is an explicit homage to 1980s new romanticism, Josh Silver's funeral synthlines channelled into a sleek electro-pop number. The adrenaline-fuelled soft-rock rush of "I Like Goils" comes on like Andrew WK in goth's panstick and vampire cape. And "Less than Zero" finds Type O Negative revisit one of their more surprising reference points, the Beatles, with Revolver-style sitar melodies cutting through the eerie gloom. As ever, with Type O Negative, learn to expect the unexpected. --Louis Pattison
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