Goth-rock outfit Type O Negative [ tickets ] has been brooding for 17 years--without the luxury of massive radio or MTV airplay. Instead, keyboardist Josh Silver attributes his band's longevity to good old-fashioned hard work.

"I think we've stolen audiences from so many areas at this point", he said. "Our demographics now are ,like, 16 years old to probably 50. We started out touring. We were never a big radio band. We were never a big MTV blow-up thing. We just went out and earned fans the hard-core, old-fashioned way: touring."

This time around, Type O Negative is touring in support of "Dead Again," an album filled with dire stories of drug use and love gone wrong, including a tribute to dead rockers. The title track, which deals with frontman Peter Steele's past drug problems, is especially poignant.

"It's basically just a story of what's been happening to Peter, essentially," Silver said. "It's a sad story, actually. It's a powerful one. Living it is something else."

On a lighter note, during the recording of the album "Dead Again," the band--rounded out by guitarist Kenny Hickey and drummer Johnny Kelly--used live drums instead of programming.

"We haven't done that since [1994's] 'Bloody Kisses,'" Silver said. "I think having a live-drum aspect is a double-edged sword. I love real drums but the problem with development in real drums is, sometimes, it gives the power to overthink something. You can change it 500 times in one rehearsal, as opposed to programming, where it takes so long you go with your original gut."

On Type O Negative's current tour, fans can expect to see about 30 minutes of material from "Dead Again." The rest is a retrospective of the band's better-known songs, including "Black No. 1," much to Silver's dismay.

"It's all retrospective at this point," Silver said. "How could you not be? How do you cover seven albums when you're playing nine-minute songs? It's tough. Normally, this set would contain a half hour off the new album and anywhere between 40 minutes and 60 minutes of older stuff, including 'Black No. 1.' I want to do a set without 'Black No. 1.' But Peter says, 'You can't do that, you can't do that!' I'm very sick of it.

"You're trying to represent a career and it would have been [easy if] the career ended in three years, but it didn't. Here we are trying to represent 17 years. That's kind of tough without doing a three-hour set."