TYPE O NEGATIVE – Peter Steele Dead At 48

TMD has just learned via official confirmation that TYPE O NEGATIVE lead vocalist and bassist Peter Steele died of a heart attack early Wednesday.

The sad news has been confirmed by fellow bandmate Kenny Hickey and Fuse Host Mistress Juliya who posted several messages on twitter. Her latest tweet says that Steele “died of heart failure”.

In 2005, there was a similar kind of death hoax that Steele later revealed was a joke. At time there were rumors that he was suffering from AIDS, he was on his deathbed and some news outlets even reported that he had attempted suicide.

After the death hoax, Steele was highly criticized for the incident. However, five years after the fact – it looks this time that his actual passing is now a strange reality. In April 2007, Steele revealed that he had embraced the Roman Catholic faith after many years of atheism.

In an interview with U.S. metal magazine Decibel, he said, “There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realise my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what’s after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it’s a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can’t believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.”

Steele became an underground legend in metal music when he founded the band CARNIVORE in January 1986, which next morphed into TYPE O NEGATIVE. The act released their debut Slow, Deep and Hard in 1991.

Music historian Piero Scaruffi has called the album the best heavy metal album of all time.

While TMD certainly doesn’t agree with Scaruffi, make no mistake that Steele’s Type O was one of the
most important underground metal acts of the 90’s.

TMD salutes a great heavy metal hero. At six foot seven tall, Steele may have been a giant… but his great sense of humor and amazing talents in music will always be what truly looms overhead us all.

May you rest in peace, Peter! Godspeed!!

http://www.typeonegative.net/