R.I.P. Peter Steele, 1962-2010

To echo Fuse VJ Juliya Chernetsky’s posts late last night, “Today is a very sad day in metal… End of an era.” Type O Negative keyboardist Josh Silver and the band’s German record label, SPV/Steamhammer, have both confirmed (via Blabbermouth) that singer/bassist Peter Steele has died of what is believed to be heart failure. Steele, born Petrus T. Ratajczyk, was 48.

Though Chernetsky mentioned Steele’s influence on metal above, it really is impossible to pinpoint a single genre in describing Type O Negative’s music. While on one hand, their most popular songs are a mixture of goth, industrial, punk, and metal, Steele and company’s influences (based on their cover song choices, for one) spanned from the Beatles, Seals & Crofts, Jimi Hendrix (Type O famously turned “Hey Joe” into “Hey Pete”), and Neil Young to the likes of Queen and Black Sabbath.

It’s hard to broach the subject of Type O’s estimable place in rock history in a short post here, but perhaps we will visit the subject later once the dust settles on this very sad news.