Type O Negative were one of those “love ‘em” or “hate ‘em” bands: you were either a devoted disciple, or really couldn’t care less.
Now, since I’m one of those people who’ll pretty much follow them anywhere, I’m probably the worst choice to review ‘Heaven is Gone’, debut LP from Seventh Void. Because it’s basically half of Type O. Annoyingly, it’s also the half that owe me stuff: Johnny Kelly (Haribo Tangfastics), and Kenny Hickey (half a ham and mushroom pizza).
Basically, I’m only ever gonna rave about how good this album is, since it’s pretty much all I’m gonna get now from Type O Negative. And I already own a Seventh Void T-shirt.
But that sort of review helps NO-ONE.
So I gave it to someone that DIDN’T like Type O. Someone I could trust to have an open mind either way.
Over to you, Dan:
Time for a statement that will make a lot of people hate me and discount my opinion from the start….I never liked Type O Negative. Sure it was sad when Pete Steele died back in April but it didn’t really affect me in any kind of way.
The reason I bring this up is because Seventh Void (if you didn’t know already) includes two member of Type O Negative, namely guitarist (and now vocalist of this band) Kenny Hickey and drummer Johnny Kelly. Due to this fact I went into listening to ‘Heaven is Gone’ with very low expectations, thinking it wouldn’t be far off Type O Negative’s sound, with a different vocalist.
I was very pleasantly surprised when opener “Closing In” kicked in, sounding more like a heavier, modern day Black Sabbath than the former drudgery of the former band, the vocals being a lot stronger and sounding somewhat Chris Cornell like too, score!
While on the subject of the sound of this album, the production has been fantastically handled by band member (second guitarist) Matt Brown. It certainly harks back to the grunge sounds of the early to mid 90’s, whether this was intentional or not, this humble reviewer doesn’t know but it certainly will sound familiar to a lot of fans of this era of music.
‘Familiar’. That is probably how I would describe this album actually. It sounds like a friend welcoming you home with open arms, a beer and a spliff ready for your consumption after a hard day at work. While this sounds like a good thing (and it is most of the time) this album does repeat itself a bit and borrow a few too many ideas from bands of the past. All in all I’d say this is a solid first album from a new (well kind of) band that isn’t really pushing out the boat just yet, possibly due to factors that have affected some of the band members this year.
This sounds like I didn’t like the album, I did, much more than I was expecting but it just needs something more to push it into the realms of excellency.
Words – Dan Roberts
‘Heaven is Gone‘ is out now on Napalm Records.
