Still proving that gothic metal need be mordant and humorless, New York's Type O returns with their sixth album of misanthropy, high drama and perversion with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Towering frontman Pete Steele is still the band’s focal point and his lyrics are more grotesquely hilarious than ever. Musically, Life is pretty accessible, eschewing much of the brutal, thrashy heaviness of Type O's early material. "(We Were) Electrocute" is a sleek, electro-pop homage to 1980s New Romanticism that showcases Josh Silver's funeral synth lines. The adrenaline-fuelled soft-rock rush of "I Like Goils" comes on like Andrew WK in a vampire cape. And "Less than Zero" finds Type O Negative revisiting one of their more surprising influences, the Beatles , as a sitar cuts through the eerie gloom. --Louis Pattison