The Origin of the Feces

Recording and production

The album was recorded in a studio, but produced to sound as if it had been recorded at a live show by adding crowd noises, banter with the fictitious audience, and even a song stopping because the venue supposedly had received a bomb threat. This was done to simulate some controversy the band had on tour in Europe for the Slow, Deep and Hard tour. The band is well-known among fans for weaving this type of dry humor into their often gloomy music.

Album content

Some of the songs are fresh arrangements of tracks that had appeared already on Slow, Deep and Hard. Many of the song titles have been deliberately miswritten:

- "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" is renamed "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else" - "Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10-8 cm-3 gm-1 sec-2" is renamed "Gravity" - "Prelude to Agony" is renamed "Pain" - "Xero Tolerance" is renamed "Kill You Tonight"

One song, "Are You Afraid", is an original that the band played live but had never recorded in studio. It points towards the gothic sound they developed on their next album, Bloody Kisses.

This album also started the tradition of Type O Negative including cover songs stylized in their distinct gothic metal sound. The album includes covers of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" (which halfway through contains the main riff of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man"), and Billy Roberts' "Hey Joe", which has been adapted into "Hey Pete" for frontman Peter Steele. The reprise of "Kill You Tonight" has a sample of the closing piano strike from The Beatles' "A Day in the Life".

P.T. Barnum was credited as a producer for the record.

Packaging

The original cover of the album has a closeup of Steele's anal sphincter. This was changed for the re-issue two years later, to a green and black version of the 1493 painting by Michael Wolgemut, The Dance of Death. The album's title is an obvious pun and a reference to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The album's original cover art may also refer to Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World.

In addition to the re-issue's cover, other artwork included in the album's sleeve/liner notes is the famous 1498 woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Track listing

All lyrics and music by Peter Steele, except where noted.

Credits

Peter Steele – lead vocals, bass guitar

Josh Silver – keyboards, effects, backing vocals

Kenny Hickey – guitars, backing vocals, co-lead vocals on "Hey Pete"

Sal Abruscato – drums

Johnny Kelly – drums (on "Paranoid")