The official Metal Suckfest pre-game was a smash last night, with Mayhem, Keep of Kalessin, Hate, Abigail Williams and Woe ripping the Gramercy Theatre’s arseholes like they’ve never been ripped before. Tonight we ratchet up the tension with the fest’s first official night; there’s still time to buy tickets here or at the door of the show. Doors are at 5pm and the first of 10 bands goes on at 5:30, so get there early!

But the fun doesn’t end when the fat lady sings (which in this case, I guess, is Municipal Waste)! After the show we’ll be partying with the bands from Suckfest at Brooklyn’s best metal bar, the legendary DUFF’s, just under the Williamsburg Bridge on the Brooklyn side. Come and booze it up with us into the wee hours of Saturday morning with metal rocking on the jukebox all night long.

And then, Saturday night, after Cynic cap the fest’s second day, we’ll be doing it all over again at our favorite “Bourbon, Beer, Rock” standby Idle Hands Bar on Avenue B and 2nd St in Manhattan. It’s only a $7 cab ride from the Gramercy, AND EVERYONE WITH A METAL SUCKFEST TICKET STUB GETS A FREE SHOT OF WHISKEY! (assuming you’re over 21… duh), so you’ve really got no excuse not to pile into a cab with your buddies and head on down. Idle Hands’ selection of bourboun and beer is aces — make sure you enjoy it.

See you tonight!

If they weren’t laughing with me, okay; if they want to laugh at me, it’s better than nothing.

– Peter Steele, 1962-2010

As far as I can tell, it was easy to laugh with Peter Steele. It seems like he invariably got the chuckling started himself; his companions merely could wait and watch, then break into laughter whether they wanted to or not. I get the same feeling watching his interviews. His joke might be brutally self-deprecating, but you laugh with a knitted brow. His remark might disregard standards of good taste or social sensitivity; you choke down tee-hees while scanning your proximity for aghast eavesdroppers. Or maybe he drops a bad pun or a hoary old uncle joke, causing you to mingle groans with guffaws.

We laughed at Peter, too. Once he, like, totally frenched an admirer on stage at The Ricki Lake Show. At the final stop of Type O Negative’s tour with Pantera, he instigated a multiple body pile-up on stage during a song. He inadvertently made it so that his bandmates would forever be asked to autograph pictures of his nude body. Only Peter.

In the first installment of our salute to Peter Steele, his friends, family, and bandmates talked to MetalSucks about their relationships with Peter, his modesty and talents, his genuine respect for fans, and his new commitment to a healthy life. In our conclusion, recurrent themes include the painful timing of his death and the future that could have been. Consider it: At one moment, Peter was poised to relocate to Staten Island to commence work on new Type O music; the next moment, he had gone and his surviving bandmates were left to contemplate a future without him. At one moment, his family was awaiting his return from Pennsylvania; the next, so began life in a world filled with little reminders of their special big man. At one moment, we had our laughs with and at Peter; the next moment, as he was dying far from his home and his family, we knew to expect no further fun and games from him. Then again, he might be laughing at us right now.

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How would I like to die? I don’t know. It wouldn’t really matter so long as I thought I’d made a difference in the world.

– Peter Steele, 1962-2010

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Peter Steele was 48 when he passed away on April 14, 2010. His instantly-recognizable baritone graced nine albums with his bands Type O Negative and Carnivore. As did his rusty, fuzzy bass tone, which seemed to represent the man himself: big, soulful, and unfiltered. And in his lyrics, the giant was revealed to be gentle, wounded but smirking, and a little paranoid. Best of all, these were sung to melodies and harmonies only rivaled in awesomeness by Gram Parsons, Jerry Cantrell, and freaking Paul McCartney. He was equally known for his humor and accessibility, the common rave being that Peter took pains to make people feel good. Or bad, like when trading brotherly zings with his bandmates on the commentary track for Type O’s video collection DVD, After Dark. In some measure, it felt empowering for us outsiders to have Peter Steele on our team. The world could keep its superhero fantasies. We have a real one.

So we miss the guy. His departure was sudden and, typical of Peter, ironically timed: A long period of turmoil had come to an end, say his friends and family, and a sober, focussed Peter was days away from a return from seclusion in Pennsylvania to his native New York. A late 2009 string of Type O concerts — which turned out to be his final shows — had marked the best Pete performances in years. Further, the band had just signed a new record deal with Napalm Records and booked a Staten Island rehearsal studio to undertake writing a new album. Nearby, an apartment had been found for Peter, also minutes from two of his bandmates’ homes. He was coming back; he was going to write songs to tell us where he’d been. His death seemed so cruel. It was hard to process.

A year has nearly passed, and we reached out to a few of Peter’s family, friends, and Type O Negative bandmates, who generously shared their thoughts, remembrances, and regrets. A massive round of applause for them, please, as it was an emotional task. In their speech, there often were just-perceptible sighs, shrugging intonations, and pauses to accomodate rushes of emotion. This has not been an easy 12 months for them. There was no shortage of topics either, from Peter’s flirtation with a law enforcement career to his legal peril, from his life as the 6’8″ baby brother to five sisters to his creative partnerships with three metal guys from Brooklyn, from the sophistication of his mind to the humility in his heart. With these words, we salute Peter Steele, we express our support to those devastated by the loss of a friend, brother, foil, confidant, co-worker, and co-goofer, and we share a community-wide hug for enduring negative year one.

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The New York Press, a.k.a. NYC’s free weekly paper that isn’t The Village Voice, has a cover story this week on Duff’s, a.k.a. the best metal bar in New York, if not the entire world. That’s right: the bar is not buried on page 46 or whatever, it’s on the friggin’ cover.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

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Our boy Jimmy Duff (pictured, left), namesake of the vaulted metal palace of Brooklyn, recently did a late-night, Pabst-fueled interview with ex-Death, ex-Iced Earth drummer (and current Howard Stern show comedian) Richard Christy. Christy talks about Amon Amarth, drinking, his job with Stern, horror films, and more. An excerpt from the chat:

I met Chuck [Shuldiner, of Death] at a bookstore in Altamont Springs in Florida, and I just told him I was a huge fan, me and the guitar player from Burning Inside we were both there and we were freakin’ out, we were like “Wow, there’s Chuck.” And he was the nicest guy in the world. He stopped and talked to us for a long time. And then after that, my goal was, after I moved to Florida, I moved there with Burning Inside, but I always had this dream in the back of my head, wow, it would be so cool to jam with Chuck and play in the band Death. And, through some good friends of mine, Rick Rinstrum, and BC Richards who played in a band called Wicked Ways in Orlando Florida, they introduced me to Chuck … When Chuck was looking for a drummer, and I auditioned. Luckily I had been practicing Death songs for about 6 or 7 years at the time because I was a huge Death fan. So, Chuck hired me for the band and that was like a dream come true because Death was my favorite, favorite metal band, and Chuck was a super nice guy, we had so many great times on tour… And it’s an honor to have played with my favorite metal band.

Read the entire interview at Duff’s Website.

-VN