Slow, Deep and Hard is the debut studio album by the American gothic metal band Type O Negative, released in 1991 on Roadrunner Records. The album, originally titled None More Negative and released in 1990 under the group's former name Repulsion, launched the band's career.
Production
Keyboardist and producer Josh Silver convinced his parents to lend him $6,000 so the band could record the album.
Composition
Revolver said that the album was "noisy and angry" and "a far cry from the hooky choruses and doom-out goth of their 1993 breakout, Bloody Kisses," having more in common with the New York hardcore sound of Peter Steele's previous band, Carnivore. The lyrics were intended to be sarcastic, though several songs, like "Unsuccessfully Coping With the Natural Beauty of Infidelity," "Prelude to Agony" and "Der Untermensch", led to accusations of misogyny, bigotry and Nazism in part due to Untermensch (German "sub-human") being a blanket term used by the Nazis to refer to non-Aryans. Keyboardist Josh Silver, who is Jewish, recalled, "They just invented a bunch of shit and said we were Nazis. Meanwhile, there were bands playing right down the block that are sieg-heiling the audience, and nobody's bothering with them. But it was a good and bad thing. As a Jew, I obviously never wanna be labeled as a Nazi. But at the same time, go ahead and make us famous. That's fine." Silver said, regarding the album's lyrics, "I think Peter was at the height of his lyrical powers". However, they did not translate well to non-English speaking countries, where lyrics intended as being sarcastic were directly translated and taken literally. "Unsuccessfully Coping With the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" used the chord structure of Simple Minds' song "Don't You (Forget About Me)". "The Misinterpretation of Silence and Its Disastrous Consequences" consists of hiss from a blank audio cassette tape; Silver explained, "We actually just ran a blank tape. We were hoping people would think it was fucked up and turn their stereos up really loud. Then the next song would kick in." The main riff of "Gravitational Constant" was inspired by the theme song for the sitcom The Munsters.
Release
The recordings on the album initially appeared on a demo called None More Negative, released under the band name Repulsion. After the band found out that there was another band using this name, they changed their name to Type O Negative. The cover image was taken from a pornographic magazine, a close-up of a penis entering a vagina during sexual intercourse.
Track listing
All lyrics and music by Peter Steele, unless noted.