Guitar Songs, Tabs & Lessons

Type O Negative

1 guitar song · Tabs, Lessons & Tone Guide Heavy Metal

Choose a Type O Negative Song to Play

Love You to Death - Guitar Lesson

YouTube Stats: 26K · 1.5K

GuitarLessons365SongLessons Guitar Lesson

Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

Type O Negative emerged from Brooklyn in 1989, blending doom metal, gothic rock, and 60s pop influences into a distinctive heavy sound. The band proved that extraordinarily low-tuned guitars, layered harmonies, and slow-burning progressions could create powerful music. Their approach demonstrates that simplicity, tone, and atmosphere matter more than technical complexity in heavy music.

Playing Style and Techniques

Guitarist Kenny Hickey anchored the sound with massive downtuned riffs, thick palm-muting, and dark vibrato. He avoided conventional solos, instead crafting melodic lead lines and layered harmonics that served each song's mood. Frontman Peter Steele doubled rhythm tracks in the studio, creating the signature wall-of-sound density. This studio and live interplay defines Type O Negative's sonic character.

Why Guitarists Study Type O Negative

Type O Negative offers a masterclass in restraint and dynamic range. The band proves that knowing when to play and when to let a massive chord ring matters deeply. Songs shift from whisper-quiet clean passages to crushing distorted sections, teaching gain staging and volume control. This is essential music for heavy players who value mood over speed.

Difficulty and Learning Path

Learning Type O Negative requires moderate difficulty with unconventional technical demands. The band used B standard tuning or lower, needing heavier gauge strings and proper setup. Riffs are chord-based and repetitive, but executing them with heaviness, timing, and feel demands patience and disciplined palm-muting. Mastering dynamics and gain transitions is key to capturing their sound.

What Makes Type O Negative Essential for Guitar Players

Kenny Hickey's rhythm style relies heavily on slow, deliberate downpicking with aggressive palm-muting. Getting that massive, chugging tone requires keeping your picking hand tight against the bridge and letting the low tuning do the heavy lifting, think Black Sabbath filtered through goth sensibility.
Type O Negative tuned extremely low, typically to B standard or even Bb standard. This means you'll need .013–.056 gauge strings (or heavier) and a proper setup to maintain intonation and playability. If your guitar buzzes at these tunings, raise your action slightly and check your truss rod relief.
Clean passages are a huge part of the Type O sound. Hickey used chorus-drenched clean tones reminiscent of The Cure and Sisters of Mercy, often arpeggiating simple major and minor chords. Practicing smooth transitions between clean and distorted tones, ideally with a footswitch, is critical for nailing their dynamics.
Rather than conventional shred solos, lead work in Type O Negative tends toward melodic, vocal-like lines played with slow vibrato and sustain. Think of the guitar as singing a counter-melody. This approach teaches you phrasing and note choice over speed, which is invaluable for any guitarist.
Layering is central to the studio sound. In recordings, multiple guitar tracks are stacked, often with slightly different EQ or pickup selections, to create a wall of sound. When playing live or at home, using a thicker distortion and scooping the mids slightly can approximate this layered density with a single guitar.

Did You Know?

Kenny Hickey has stated that he intentionally avoids playing fast or showing off technically, believing that restraint and heaviness serve the songs better than flashy soloing, a philosophy he's compared to how Ian Curtis approached vocals in Joy Division.

Peter Steele played bass but also recorded many rhythm guitar parts in the studio, sometimes doubling Hickey's parts an octave lower or with different pickup settings to thicken the mix. This means some album tracks feature three or four guitar layers that one guitarist simply can't replicate alone.

The band's signature low tuning was partly inspired by Black Sabbath and partly by necessity, Peter Steele's deep baritone voice sat more comfortably against guitars tuned to B or lower, so the entire band dropped their tuning to match his vocal range.

On the album 'October Rust,' Hickey incorporated clean arpeggiated passages heavily influenced by The Beatles and 60s pop music, proving that a doom metal guitarist can convincingly channel George Harrison when the song calls for it.

Type O Negative recorded much of their classic material at Systems Two Recording in Brooklyn, where producer Josh Silver (also the band's keyboardist) often ran guitar signals through multiple amps simultaneously to capture different tonal characteristics in one take.

Kenny Hickey has spoken about using extremely cheap gear early in the band's career, including budget solid-state amps, yet still achieving a massive tone, a reminder that technique and tuning matter more than price tags.

The song 'Love You to Death' features one of the band's most iconic clean-to-heavy dynamic shifts, making it a perfect study piece for guitarists learning how to build tension and release within a single song structure.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

October Rust 1996

This is the essential Type O Negative album for guitarists. 'Love You to Death' teaches clean arpeggiation and dynamic heavy transitions, while 'My Girlfriend's Girlfriend' and 'Green Man' showcase melodic lead lines over droning low-tuned rhythms. The album balances goth-rock clean tones with crushing distortion, making it a perfect workout for gain staging and dynamics.

Spotify Apple Music

Bloody Kisses 1993

The album that broke Type O Negative into the mainstream. 'Christian Woman' is a must-learn for its iconic clean intro building into a doom riff, and 'Black No. 1' is a lesson in palm-muted chugging at low tempos with memorable melodic hooks. The guitar tones here are rawer and heavier than 'October Rust,' giving you a different palette to study.

Spotify Apple Music

World Coming Down 1999

The heaviest and most emotionally crushing Type O album. Tracks like 'Everyone I Love Is Dead' and 'World Coming Down' feature some of the lowest-tuned, most punishing riffs in the catalog. This album is ideal for guitarists who want to push their downtuning to the extreme and practice sustaining massive, slow chord movements with perfect timing.

Spotify Apple Music

Life Is Killing Me 2003

Often overlooked, this album features some of Kenny Hickey's most varied playing. 'I Don't Wanna Be Me' is a surprisingly upbeat punk-influenced riff workout, while 'Nettie' showcases melodic lead guitar over acoustic textures. It's great for guitarists looking to explore Type O's range beyond pure doom.

Spotify Apple Music

Tone & Gear

Guitar

Kenny Hickey is most closely associated with Gibson and Epiphone SG models, as well as various ESP guitars throughout the band's career. He's been seen playing Gibson SG Standards and Specials, favoring their lighter weight and thinner neck profiles for the band's low tunings. In later years he used signature-style ESP models with set necks and dual humbuckers. The key factor across all his guitars is a set-neck design with humbuckers, anything that sustains well and handles extreme low tunings without losing note definition.

Amp

Hickey's amp choices evolved over the years, but the core of the Type O Negative guitar sound comes from high-gain tube amps pushed hard. He used Marshall JCM800 and JCM900 heads extensively, sometimes paired with Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifiers for the thicker low-end saturation. The amps were typically run with the gain at 7-8 and the mids scooped slightly to create that cavernous, dark tone. Cabinet-wise, standard 4x12 cabs with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers provided the necessary bottom-end thump for those B-standard tunings.

Pickups

Hickey primarily used passive humbuckers with moderate-to-high output, stock Gibson pickups (490R/498T or similar) in his SG models, and higher-output humbuckers in his ESP guitars. The pickup choice leans toward the warmer, thicker side rather than the ultra-tight active pickup sound. This gives the tone a more organic, slightly woolly character that suits the doom-goth aesthetic. The neck pickup was frequently used for clean passages to get that dark, round arpeggiated tone, while the bridge humbucker handled all the heavy riffing.

Effects & Chain

Type O Negative's guitar effects were relatively minimal. Kenny Hickey used a Boss CE-series chorus pedal (or rack-mounted chorus) for the lush, goth-rock clean tones heard on songs like 'Love You to Death.' A basic overdrive or boost pedal was occasionally used to push the amp harder for leads. Reverb and delay were often added in the mixing stage by Josh Silver rather than being pedals in the live chain. The philosophy was largely amp-driven distortion with chorus as the only essential pedal effect, keeping the signal chain simple to preserve the massive low-end of their extreme tunings.

Recommended Gear

Guitar

Gibson SG Standard

Kenny Hickey's SG Standard provides the lightweight, thin-necked platform essential for Type O Negative's extreme B-standard tunings without sacrificing sustain. Its set-neck construction and stock humbuckers deliver the warm, woolly character that defines their cavernous doom-goth tone.

Amp

Marshall JCM800

The JCM800's high-gain tube topology, pushed to 7-8 on the dial, generates the scooped-mid aggression at the core of Type O Negative's heavy riffing and crushing low-end saturation. This amp's responsiveness to pickup output makes it ideal for their passive humbucker-driven signal chain.

Amp

Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier

The Dual Rectifier's thick, compressed low-end response complements the JCM800 for even heavier saturation in Type O Negative's doom passages, adding harmonic density that preserves note definition in extreme tunings. Its dual-channel design provides versatility between crushing rhythms and textured clean tones.

How to Practice Type O Negative on GuitarZone

Every Type O Negative song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice Love You to Death - Guitar Lesson