When I met Type O Negative and Peter Steele I was a fat, confused, sixteen year-old. I was beginning to realize that my parents were as fucked up as me, the path of glory led to nowhere but the grave, and rot awaited all of us. In other words, the dude spoke to me. A penchant for the melancholic, his discussions of life and death and fragility and infidelity made a real lot of sense.

Over the years I haven’t listened to them as much as I used to. Mr. Steele and his lamentations have faded into the background of my mind. Steele, much like what used to be my incessant obsession with my own mortality, floated to the forefront every few years only to drift away.

It seems fitting then, in a year that has had me caring for a withering grandmother and once again uncomfortably aware of my own impermanence that Peter Steele would pass away.

Oh, you would do that.

One of my most magical concert moments ever took place at a Type O Negative concert. I must have been a junior in high school, and I went to the show with a pack of friends. During the bridge to Love You To Death, Steele polished off the bottle of wine he had been drinking the entire time and gunned it into the crowd. He then told us to give ourselves a hand, and the quiet bridge accompanied the sound of applause. I don’t know why it’s stuck with me throughout the decade-plus that’s passed, but I’ve always recalled it fondly.

Maybe the thing I enjoyed so much about Type O Negative was their ability to turn the morbid into the beautiful. Their songs about death weren’t nearly as depressing as they were pretty. Steele somehow managed to capture the gorgeous decay of existence.

Steele passed away this week. So it goes.