 While Anathema's music has "changed a lot", their "main features remained a heart-rending melancholy and intensity".In North America, Peter Steele had formed Type O Negative in 1990 out of the remnants of his former thrash metal band Carnivore.With their debut album "Slow, Deep and Hard" in 1991, the New York based outfit pursued a "melodramatic goth rock style" that "encompasses long songs built on simple riffs, theatrical shouting vocals, churchy-sounding organ and vocal-harmony passages, and the odd mechanical noise".