If you're a fan of the heaviest and gloomiest riffs, particularly those that rained down in the 1990s, there’s no way the idea of Sun Don’t Shine won’t have you dribbling.
A meeting of minds, featuring half of New York goth metal titans Type O Negative (guitarist/vocalist Kenny Hickey and drummer Johnny Kelly) and half the classic 90s line-up of New Orleans sludge gods Crowbar (guitarist/vocalist Kirk Windstein and bassist Todd Strange), this is a doom supergroup for the ages. And, in a bizarre sort of way, it was actually funded into being by a fan with a dream.
“Kirk and I have a mutual friend, Andrew Spaulding, who runs Corpse Paint Records,” Kenny reveals about this dynamo team-up’s origin story. “He was Type O’s merch guy some 20 years ago, and was always going on about wanting to put us in a room together. So he saved up some money, put us all on a plane together, and it was just an experiment to see what came out.”
Article continues belowInitially formed as EYE AM, Sun Don’t Shine developed through a series of sessions captured on debut album Birth To Death. Their music delivers on the kind of Sabbathy goodness you’d hope for from these two pairs, but, Kenny is keen to assert, it’s actually brighter and has more room to breathe than the bands you might know its members for.
“Kirk and I talked about this before we even got together, that we didn’t want this to sound like our other projects,” Kenny explains.
“I don’t wanna be afraid to lighten up the music when it’s right. The template would be Led Zeppelin, where Zeppelin could be the most beautiful acoustic thing, and then bring the heaviest and most driving dark part. I want that full spectrum of light to dark in the music, where it’s not the same emotional state throughout the record.”
It’s worth pointing out that Kenny is speaking as someone whose CV includes Type O, Seventh Void and the doomy Silvertomb. In the scheme of things, Birth To Death is still bloody dark. Looking back on self-destructive habits and pondering mortality, it’s a reflective record that feels like the kind of thing they couldn’t have made as younger men.
“They’re maturing subjects, definitely,” muses Kenny. “I’m more concerned with legacy now and what I’m gonna leave behind. I wanna write lyrics that have real weight in real life experience. I don’t wanna write about still dyeing my hair black!”
It’s a cheeky reference to Type O hit Black No.1, and Kenny admits his headspace has changed since the 90s.
“When Type O started, we all thought, ‘This band is gonna be fly-by-night, it’ll be over next year.’ Everything was, ‘Fuck it!’, not realising that 30-plus years later, people are still playing that stuff,” he marvels.
“There’s a quote from Ace Frehley, where somebody said to him that he influenced so many guitarists, and he says, ‘I get that a lot, and if I knew that was gonna happen I would’ve practised a lot more!’ So now I try and do things as best I can, every time I sit down.”
The weight of experience is a thread that seems to connect Sun Don’t Shine’s two camps, with both the scenes and the cities they came from – New York and New Orleans – having suffered and survived their fair share of loss and strife.
“Even though you could hardly get farther south or north, there’s similarities in the culture between New Orleans people and especially Brooklyn people,” Kenny considers. “They’re very personable, they’re very in-your-face, and they’re loud and you know what you get with them, no bullshit.”
It doesn’t hurt that Kirk has been more than complimentary over the years about the impact of Type O (and frontman Peter Steele’s pre-Type O band, Carnivore) on the NOLA sludge sound. So there’s a sense of things coming full circle as these kindred spirits unite in Sun Don’t Shine.
“We both toured with Pantera in the 90s, and Kirk was the first person I met from that whole camp, because he was a Carnivore fan, so it goes way back,” Kenny agrees. “I love sludge metal, still today, and we have the same tastes. And Kirk and Todd are creative forces; if you need a riff right now, Kirk will go in the corner and boom, a riff comes out.”
Kenny also has a new Silvertomb album coming later this year – which he promises will be “really dreary” – adding to the impressive discography he’s built since the dissolution of Type Of Negative in 2010.
“I think I was preparing myself to have to do something different, because both Peter and I, we didn’t know when we were gonna be dead,” says Kenny. “Josh [Silver, keyboardist] certainly was – he got his whole degree and became an EMT. You always had the sense in Type O that this was gonna be over any minute.”
As fatalistic as that may seem, it’s an approach that ended up giving Kenny an unlikely sense of optimism.
“I’ve come to terms with the fact that there’s not really a choice for me. I’ve realised now it’s not about those two or three hit songs that are your most well-known to the general public, it’s about a body of work,” Kenny explains.
“Whatever the people wanna do with it is not in your control, but it’s your job to build the best, most comprehensive body of work you possibly can. That’s my goal and that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Birth To Death is out now via Corpse Paint Records
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