Locals accuse band of racism

Anti-Racist Action, a local organization, protests Type O Negative, who will play at the Crowbar tonight.

Dallas Cowboys football stars Erik Williams and Michael Irvin were recently defamed by rape and sexual harassment allegations that were found to be false last Friday.

Through the high publicity of the case, the entire nation learned a valuable lesson in the value of fair judgment.

The accusations have not been proven to be either true or false, and the band denies their veracity as adamantly as the accusers insist on their accuracy.

"Type O Negative is about sex, death, life, fucking," Type O Negative guitarist Kenny Hickey said. "There's no politics to this band."

But songs such as "Der Untermensch," which, translated from German, means "The Subhuman," tell a different story.

Here are the lyrics to one verse: "Poor Tawana gets born with a birth defect/ But it only increases your welfare check/ . . . Send you back where you came from / Get the fuck rid of you (sub)human scum / If you don't pay taxes you shouldn't vote / So get in line and get back on the boat / I'd love to tear down all those projects / Kiss my ass home relief reject."

But Hickey claims no responsibility for these implications.

"I think the lyrics were written by Peter," he said, referring to Peter Steele, the group's lead singer. "It's about people who are young and healthy and can work . . . people who take advantage," Hickey said.

As far as any suggestion that can be inferred from the lyrics that these able-bodied deviants are immigrants, Hickey said no such meaning was intended.

"Anybody from America is from somewhere, except the Native Americans," he said.

Hickey also pointed out that the band's keyboardist, Josh Silver, is Jewish.

But James Mattern, 20, who founded the new local chapter of ARA last week, said Type O Negative's material is far from innocent.

"All of their material is pretty blatantly racist," Mattern said.

"We've been trying to get (the show) canceled, but it was impossible," he said, adding they do not plan on picketing the show. "We just wanted to warn people about what they were going to if they went to it."

David Wells, director of operations of Dante's Restaurants, Inc., the company that owns Crowbar, 420 E. College Ave., said the allegations are completely false.

"There's no truth to that whatsoever," he said.

A representative of the publicity department at Roadrunner Records, the group's label, who did not want to give her name, said the band encountered some opposition in its early years, but has since transcended the controversy. The publicist insisted that the group does not direct any negative feelings toward any group of people in its music.

"Peter is very opinionated," she said. "He has a lot of political views, but they're not like that."

Tuvia Abramson, director of Penn State Hillel Foundation, said he doesn't know whether the band members are neo-nazis, but if so, then he justifies the opposition the band faces.

"There is no place for neo-nazis on this earth, because they are promotion of racist theory," Abramson said. "I think some people in the rock world don't realize the power of the written word, and they take liberties without thinking of the consequences," he said.

Mattern said that although his fight against the concert is over, he will continue to promote ARA values to defend the rights of the oppressed. The ARA started in Canada and is now an international effort to combat racism, Mattern said.

"Anytime there's a KKK or Nazi rally, they're there," he said.