TYPE O NEGATIVE Remembers DIMEBAG DARRELL On 'Positive' New LP

TYPE O NEGATIVE frontman Peter Steele recently spoke to MTV.com about the songwriting/recording process for "Dead Again", the Brooklyn metallers' first collection of fresh material since 2003's "Life Is Killing Me". The delay, Steele explained, was partly fueled by the bandmembers' escalating ages and personal responsibilities. According to Steele, "Life happened," and sometimes life can make being in a rock band damn near impossible.

"There was also a period there where we were in renegotiations with Roadrunner Records, and that kind of fell through," he told MTV.com. "I was in a psychiatric institute for a while, too, and I went through rehab [for cocaine, alcohol and 'Burger King']. As the band has gotten older, you have wives and kids and house payments and divorces and separations and all this other f---ing sh-- that goes on, so when we'd schedule rehearsals, they'd start revolving around, 'Well, can we find a babysitter?' It just becomes more and more complicated."

Steele said he was also grappling with the deaths of several people who were close to him, including his mother and late PANTERA/DAMAGEPLAN guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. "It was like a slap in the face with a frozen hand," he said of his losses. And, of course, there was that brief stint at Riker's Island that kept him, um, tied up. (While Steele wouldn't discuss his incarceration in detail, he did say that he'd been arrested for "accidentally punching someone in the face 50 times.")

His mother's death, Steele said, was a major eye-opener for him, and it made him "realize my own mortality. That's why this forthcoming album has more of a punky, hardcore edge, because I'm pissed off at life 'cause I know I'm going to f---ing die. I just want to beat up the reaper."

Read the entire article at MTV.com.