Pete Steele: 1962-2010

Known for his hulking presence and bass heavy voice, Type O Negative frontman Pete Steele passed away Wednesday, April 14, 2010. Doctors are currently saying his cause of death was heart failure, but it has not been confirmed.

He was 48 years old.

Steele was a giant in life and in the music industry, playing in the bands Fallout and Carnivore before finally forming the band which would be his claim to fame, Type O Negative.

Born as Petrus T. Ratajczyc, Steele was from Brooklyn, NY and would make sure you knew it as his sarcasm and thick Brooklyn accent dominated his music. He was tough as nails and made a great impact on the industry, with Carnivore becoming an underground phenomena and releasing six studio albums, a greatest hits album (The Least Worst of Type O Negative), and a “live” album where the band recorded in a basement with a fake audience, (Origin of the Feces) with Type O Negative. The albums “Bloody Kisses” and “October Rust” went platinum and gold.

Both Type O and Carnivore shows were known to be intense and at times “indescribable,” with Steele’s over-driven echoing bass tone and his deep growling vocals fueling the ferocity of the performances. Steele put blood, sweat, and tears into everything he did.

Steele was also known for his tongue in cheek humor and sarcasm, showing up in lyrics, T-shirts, interviews, and anything else he could find. The first Type O Negative album “Slow, Deep, and Hard” is a close up picture of sexual intercourse with Peter’s stamp of approval (and in rumors, his penis).

The last things Type O Negative released were the “Symphony for the Devil” DVD and 2007’s “Dead Again.”

Steele battled with drugs and depression his entire life, which often became the subject matter for many of Type O’s songs. Steele was incarcerated on Riker’s Island for 3 months several years ago for assault and emitted to a psych ward due to heavy substance abuse and threats against his sisters that he felt betrayed him amongst other things. These events became the basis for the lyrics on the song “Tripping a Blind Man” off the band’s latest release.

Steele was also notorious for posing nude for an issue of Playgirl in 1995, the reason being he assumed the band would get more women, which backfired when he discovered only a small fraction of the subscribers are female. The results caused him to write the song “I Like Goils.”

Prior to Steele’s Death, Type O was writing material for the next album.