Type O Negative

Across a career that spanned two decades, Type O Negative built a devoted following through a distinctive catalog and dark sense of humor. The band released seven studio albums on Roadrunner Records between 1991 and 2003, and one final album, Dead Again, through SPV/Steamhammer in 2007. They were never afraid to poke fun at their own reputation, going so far as titling their greatest hits collection The Least Worst of Type O Negative and even recording a fake live album where the audience booed them after every song and a bomb threat abruptly halted the concert. Steele's health struggles cast a shadow over the band's later years, and after releasing 2003's Life Is Killing Me, he largely withdrew from public view for several years, entering rehabilitation for substance abuse issues and serving jail time for drug-related charges. Despite the turmoil, the band pressed on to release Dead Again in 2007, a work that hinted at Steele's evolving spirituality and a hard-won sobriety.

Type O Negative's story came to an abrupt end in 2010. The band was permanently split up following Peter Steele's death from sepsis caused by diverticulitis, initially reported as heart failure, on April 14, 2010, at age 48. Hickey and Kelly confirmed in a November 2010 interview that Type O Negative had broken up following Steele's death, with the surviving members choosing to let the band's legacy stand rather than continue without its frontman. In the years since, Hickey and Kelly carried the torch through the projects Seventh Void and later Silvertomb, while Josh Silver stepped away from music entirely, becoming a paramedic in New York. Type O Negative's influence endures in the gothic and doom metal scenes they helped define, remembered as pioneers who married crushing riffs with dark romance and gallows humor.

It is fitting that a band so steeped in mood and atmosphere found its way into Wayne Dennon's lens. Wayne photographed Type O Negative just once, at a show in 2007, and that single encounter left behind 28 photographs now preserved in this archive, images that have drawn 20,757 views from visitors returning again and again to revisit the band's haunting stage presence. As with so much of Wayne's work, this small but striking collection stands as a quiet, lasting tribute to a band whose music was always, in its own dark way, about remembering what came before.