So much of our musical destinies are dictated by algorithms these days. Your favorite band can come to you via a random shuffle, and you could miss the song that would be your all-time favorite if you only heard it, because an algorithm deemed it too dissimilar from your usual listens.

In the beginning of 2019, I was on the hunt for music to do pushups to. I tried many varieties of hard rock, metal, and who knows what else, but hadn’t found that special something that could grant me extra strength and stamina. Then one January morning, I got a recommendation from an algorithm.

“Love You to Death” is a seven minute long, rather dramatic song about the singer being a big bad beast who is going to get their beloved, but perhaps the beast within will love the object of their affections to death. It ends with the refrain, “Am I good enough? Am I good enough for you?”

After the preceding 6 minutes of bravado about being such a hunk that his lover would die (le petit mort), this little vulnerability, a hint of weakness, came as a surprise. I cried, then I found the album the song was on and listened to it on repeat for the rest of the year.

October Rust couldn’t have found me at a better time. I was feeling called to nature, to old spiritual practices I hadn’t considered in years, and to exploring the religions of my ancestors, who I guess would have been druids. I was also developing an inner sense of masculinity, and finding the language to describe my sexuality in the unlikeliest of places.

Whenever I try to explain Type O Negative to somebody, I usually summarize them this way: their songs are about druids, the woods, autumn, goth girlfriends, death, and cumming. Also they incorporate some beautiful shoegazey and psychedelic guitar sounds into their otherwise forceful, driving sound.

The romance-novel-level sensuality of their lyrics also struck a chord. I’d always avoided writing about sex explicitly. It just seemed impossible to convey without resorting to cliches and flowery language, but here was Type O Negative managing to convey darkness and boning all at once. 

The juxtaposition of magick, nature, and cumming somehow made the lyrics feel less silly and more sensual and beautiful. It was also extremely helpful that the singer looks like if Dracula was a 7 foot tall underpants model.

“I’ll do anything… to make you cum.”

Over the course of the year, I changed in many ways. My muscles grew as I did pushups while blasting Type O Negative. My writing ability expanded as I felt more comfortable including the vast expanse of sensuality in my words. And as testosterone did its work, my desires changed.

For most of my life, I’ve considered myself a pretty hardline bisexual. My first crushes were on boys and girls, and I was interested in all sorts of gender identities and expressions. Then, as my hormones changed and rewired my brain (and heart and junk) I experienced a sea change. I think I realized it while googling “Peter Steele naked” for the 100th time. Suddenly, I was only attracted to men and masculinity. Not, of course, stereotypical masculinity, but the many diverse shades of How to be Masculine that men are occupying these days.

It’s said that the music we listen to during puberty is the music we continue to like for our entire lives. Transitioning with hormones, then, is a second puberty. The music I’ve listened to through this process has no doubt become permanently ingrained in my mind. 

Type O Negative, and Peter Steele’s wondrous lyrics, have been instrumental in helping me figure out my sexuality and learning to write anything remotely steamy. How I love the piping hot blasphemy of “Christian Woman” (She wants to feel her God inside of her, deep inside of her), the magick and nature-infused sensuality of “Be My Druidess”, the literal fantasy about boning a fire in “Pyretta Blaze”, and of course “Love You to Death”, the song that began this obsession.

I’ll leave you with this couplet I composed in honor of Peter Steele:

A towering, resplendent goth boyfriend
Glum angel, I am yours until the end