Type O Negative World Coming Down Album Cover

[Erminia Scharnberg]

WorldComing Down is the fifth studio album by the American gothic metal band Type O Negative. Released on September 21, 1999, it is considered to be the darkest of the band's releases,[1] having been written after a series of deaths in frontman Peter Steele's family, combined with the desire to break away from the sexually charged themes of the previous albums.[2] It was also the band's first album to reach the Top 40 on the Billboard 200.

As with the band's previous album, October Rust, this album also has a 'joke intro': in this case, "Skip It", 11 seconds of staccato band noise meant to sound as if the listener's CD player is skipping. Contrary to common belief, Cassette versions did not have the noise of a tape being 'eaten' by the tape player, it was actually the same as in CD version. However, 2019 released None More Negative vinyl box set re-issue and 2020 released stand-alone vinyl version begins as if the record is damaged and stuck in a locked groove during the intro of "White Slavery". The track ends with the band's guitarist, Kenny Hickey, shouting "Sucker!"

The first song, "White Slavery", deals with cocaine addiction. Discussing his dalliance with the drug and inspiration behind the song in a 1999 Kerrang! interview, Steele recalled: "There were a handful of times that were fucking horrible, but one night in particular was really bad, and that's when I stopped doing it. I was really depressed and homesick, and the worst part is when you're coming down from it. It's five in the morning and there's no one to talk to, you're on a tour bus doing 80mph and you look out the window and it looks like you're on Mars. All I could think about was jumping out of the bus while it was moving, but that would have made too many people happy."[3]

Two other songs, "Everyone I Love Is Dead" and "Everything Dies", touch on the difficulties of watching family members and loved ones die. Another track, "Who Will Save the Sane?", which deals with mental illness and psychiatry, incorporates Steele reciting the number pi to 9 decimal places (3.141592653).

The album contains three "soundscape" tracks, which are named after internal organs, as segues between songs. Each of these songs is intended to suggest the possibilities of the deaths the members of the band may have suffered at the time: "Sinus" as death from cocaine use, "Liver" as death through alcohol abuse and "Lung" as death from smoking. In an ironic foreboding, Steele once told a close friend that he could not bear to listen to "Sinus" after it was mixed and completed, because the sound of the heartbeat escalating to its furious pace after the cocaine-snorting sound effect actually drove him to the point of an anxiety attack because of its realism.[citation needed]

Also included at the end of the album is a cover song, a medley of three Beatles songs. In the liner notes to the album's 2020 vinyl reissue, Hickey stated "All four of us are Beatles freaks" but added ruefully: "Being four idiots and not knowing anything, we didn't realise that The Beatles charge $35,000 per song. They were the most expensive songs in the music industry that you could get rights to for a cover - and we did a medley, so it was three songs! It came out great, but the record company was like, 'This is gonna cost $75,000! You guys are outta your minds! Who's gonna pay it? Not us!'" Keyboardist and producer Josh Silver eventually convinced the label to foot the bill.[4]

An additional song recorded during the album sessions, "12 Black Rainbows," was issued as the B-side for the "Everything Dies" single;[5] later, it was included on the compilation album The Least Worst Of with two other unreleased tracks from the same sessions ("It's Never Enough" and "Stay Out of My Dreams").[6]

The reversed vocal technique of backmasking is used in several places on the album; some segments are more audibly apparent than others. In particular, backmasking during the intro section of "Creepy Green Light", which was originally titled "Spooky Green Light", refers to a third-person "spell" of a friend's intention to be reunited with a dead spouse.

Following its release the members of Type O Negative had mixed opinions about the music on World Coming Down. Keyboardist and producer Josh Silver felt that the music was strong, while Steele said the songs were too strongly connected to an uncomfortable period in his life.[citation needed] Live shows performed since the initial tour to support World Coming Down usually had very few, if any, selections from the album in the set list. However, the band often played the song "World Coming Down" in its entirety during the Dead Again tour.

World Coming Down received mostly positive reviews. AllMusic critic Steve Huey gave the album a 4-out-of-5 star rating.[7] Adam Wasylyk of Chronicles of Chaos gave World Coming Down a very positive review: "An album that won't be ignored, it's my favourite album of 1999. Hands down."[9] Christopher Thelen of The Daily Vault called the album "a great listen" and wrote that "for the most part", World Coming Down "suggests that" Type O Negative "is doing things right".[11]

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I hope you've been enjoying this July Fourth. For the holiday, we're featuring my interview with Jon Bon Jovi. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the band Bon Jovi's first album. Since then, the band has sold more than 130 million albums. After decades of singing anthemic songs like "Livin' On A Prayer," "You Give Love A Bad Name" and "Wanted Dead Or Alive" in sold-out stadiums around the world, Jon Bon Jovi started having vocal problems that got worse over time. He tried every kind of therapy, and when none of them was effective enough to make a significant difference, he did what he wanted to avoid - he had surgery. Although it didn't restore his voice to what it used to be, the surgery made it possible for him to sing again.

Now Jon Bon Jovi is the subject of a documentary series called "Thank You, Goodnight" that's streaming on Hulu. It alternates between a retrospective of his life and career and his reckoning with his vocal problems over the past few years. In celebration of the anniversary of the band's first album, a new Bon Jovi album called "Forever" was released last month. This year, in conjunction with the Grammys, Bon Jovi was named the MusiCares Person of the Year. The tribute concert included a performance by his New Jersey friend, Bruce Springsteen, who Bon Jovi has known since he was a teenager. When I spoke with Jon Bon Jovi in April, we started with the best-known track from the band's first album called "Bon Jovi." The song is "Runaway."

JON BON JOVI: (Singing) On the street where you live, girls talk about their social lives. They're made of lipstick, plastic and paint, a touch of sable in their eyes. All your life, all your life, all you've asked, when's your daddy going to talk to you? But you were living in another world, trying to get your message through. No one heard a single word you said. They should have seen it in your eyes what was going around your head. Oh, she's a little runaway. Daddy's girl learned fast all those things she couldn't say. Ooh, she's a little runaway.

BON JOVI: Boy. The future was bright, but nobody had any idea where it would lead us. I think that all you could ever have prayed for was that somebody would give you an opportunity. And for me, that opportunity came when I went to see a DJ in 1983 and was fortunate enough that that new radio station did not have a receptionist. When I tapped on the window of the broadcast booth, the DJ made the sign of shush by putting his finger across his lips, and the program director came out. He said, what can I help you with? And I told him I'd love him to hear some music. They asked me to wait until after the shift. He came out, he heard that song "Runaway" and he said, you know, that's a hit song. And I said, I know. And then they proceeded to tell me about a homegrown talent album that they wanted to support, and that song could be on that record. Little did I know that that was going to lead to a major record deal that I still have today, some 40 years later.

GROSS: So 40 years ago, when you were starting your recording career, who did you think you would be in your 60s? Did you think you'd still be performing? Did you think you'd ever be in your 60s? 'Cause when you're 20s, you don't think - you know, 60s seems like leaps and leaps away.

BON JOVI: You know, back in those days, I think as far ahead as I'd ever dreamt was the year 2000 because it was that magical science fiction number. Where are we as a race going to be in 2000? At that time, I was meant to be 38 years old. I thought, am I going to still have a record deal? Will I have a family? But I never dreamt about 2024 and a 40th anniversary. Who could have?

BON JOVI: But - so they weren't going to have been my choices, but they were my parents' choices, but if you had considered, 40 years ago, where would rock and roll be, you know, for men and women who were 60 and on, there weren't anybody to refer to, and now you can look, and the Rolling Stones are 80-plus, and the E Street Band are 70-plus, and U2 and Bon Jovi are 60-plus and very active.

BON JOVI: You know, what the public are going to see, as of this interview and the docuseries, was shot one and two years ago, and I did have some major issues - things that weren't visible to me, because any singer knows about something called nodules. And they look like a little pimple on the vocal cord, and they can easily cut those off and you recover from it. Mine was a little different, where one of my cords was actually atrophying, and they had to put in an implant, a Gore-Tex implant, outside of the cords to rebuild them, and so the process has been slower than I'd hoped for, but the progress and the process are really doing very well. I'm currently able to sing. For me now, the bar is, can I do 2 1/2 hours a night, four nights a week?

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