Sarcasm, Humor Beat Out Talent, Or So They Say

Type O Negative keyboardist Josh Silver says the popular misconception that people have about his band “is that we’re good.”

“Everybody reads what they want to in music,” Silver explains by phone from a tour stop in Portland. “Ambiguity is part of music. I don’t mind when people misconstrue what we’re doing because it usually makes us far more interesting.”

Silver’s self-deprecating attitude is consistent with the rest of the New York goth-metal band’s stance. Onstage, baritone singer Peter Steele has been known to introduce songs by deadpanning, “This next musical abortion …” Type O Negative adorns the covers of recent albums with statements like: “Don’t mistake lack of talent for genius” or “Functionless art is simply tolerated vandalism … We are the vandals.”

“That’s just something to make people talk, to (mess) with them,” says Silver. “We gotta (mess) with the world. There’s no reason not to.”

It’s obvious the members of Type O Negative, who play The Met on Saturday with Sister Machine Gun, hold nothing sacred, irreverent toward anything and everything, including themselves.

“We’re sarcastic (jerks),” Silver says matter-of-factly. “Is it intentional? I think we’d be as sarcastic if we were delivering pizzas.”

Sarcasm coupled with a wry sense of humor are among the band’s most endearing qualities, however.

On its new album, “October Rust,” and 1993’s “Bloody Kisses,” Type O Negative slyly interjects a massive helping of sarcasm, pandering and over-dramatizing with the chilling and somber imagery common of heavy metal and gothic rock.

What the band projects isn’t just a horror show but a B-grade rendering that could be called “Vampires on Coney Island.” And Type O Negative nails the part.

Sure, the doom-and-gloom quartet strives to shock, but they also draw a few laughs in the process.

Take the song “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” on “October Rust,” for example. Steele’s brooding baritone examines a unique relationship: “My girlfriend’s girlfriend / she looks like you / my girlfriend’s girlfriend / she’s my girl, too.”

In “Christian Woman,” the band’s breakthrough hit from “Bloody Kisses,” Steele wails with melodramatic distress: “She’s got a date at midnight / with nosveratu.” Later in the song he sings, “Loving you is like loving the dead.” He means it literally, if you catch our drift.

The opening band, Sister Machine Gun, has ties to the Inland Northwest.

Singer/guitarist/mastermind Chris Randall lived in St. Maries, Idaho, while attending high school in the ‘80s.

“Opportunities for any kind of performing or playing are rather lean in North Idaho,” Randall said in a interview last year, explaining why he left. “Once I got to the East Coast, there were opportunities aplenty.”

Years later, he’s pushing the boundaries of industrial and electronic music with his Chicago band, Sister Machine Gun.

In 1996, Randall and his band released their third album, “Burn,” and appeared on the two “Mortal Combat” soundtrack albums.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Type O Negative will play The Met at 8 p.m. Saturday with Sister Machine Gun. Tickets are $12.50 in advance and $15 at the door, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call 325-SEAT.