Kenny Hickey on New Supergroup EYE AM

Type O Negative founding member and guitarist Kenny Hickey joined Chuck Armstrong on Thursday night's Loudwire Nights (June 8). Among many different topics, Hickey opened up about his latest musical project, the supergroup EYE AM.

"I guess this was inevitable," Hickey told Chuck about the new band.

Alongside Hickey, EYE AM features Crowbar vocalist and guitarist Kirk Windstein, drummer and vocalist Johnny Kelly and former Crowbar bassist Todd Strange.

"It's a bunch of super guys, man," Hickey said, laughing.

When Chuck asked him how these super guys got together, Hickey explained, "It came about through a mutual friend, Drew Spaulding. He started Corpse Paint Records. He actually was, back in the day, the merchandise guy for Type O for our touring."

Hickey connected with Spaulding when he was playing with Danzig in 2009 and Spaulding happened to be handling merch for them.

"We hit it off right away. He came to my room the first night after dress rehearsal; we drank a bottle of vodka together—the rest is history."

Hickey and Windstein have known each other for years, first meeting in 1993. "It was the first time we went to New Orleans with Type O," Hickey recalled. "He's been a deep Type O, Pete Steele, Carnivore fan—he's been around since the beginning."

As Hickey described it, Spaulding connected with Windstein in a similar fashion as that fateful night of vodka drinking in 2009.

"He ran into Kirk one night in a bar and they hit it off and became drinking buddies, so we're all drinking buddies now, for years. It was always Drew's idea—two of his favorite guys to drink with, what would happen if he threw them in a studio together?"

What happened, so far, is the new EYE AM song, "Dreams Always Die With the Sun." While Hickey isn't sure what the future holds for the band, they are committed to hitting the studio together soon for a few days to see what happens.

"We all knew there was some kind of special energy when we were listening to ["Dreams Always Die With the Sun"]."

While Hickey is celebrating new music with a new band, 2023 also marks a couple of significant milestones for Type O Negative, namely the 30th anniversary of the release of Bloody Kisses and the 20th anniversary of the release of Life Is Killing Me. Hickey admitted he doesn't look back on milestones like that very often, but he also seemed to be genuinely encouraged by the resurgence of Type O among a younger generation.

"It means the band transcended," he said. "To me, that's [what we should] celebrate, a whole new generation is listening to Type O and taking it into the future. Hopefully, it'll last at least as long as I'm alive."

When Chuck asked him why he thought Type O managed to transcend like that, Hickey was quick with a response.

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"Any band that transcends, there's got to be an honesty to it," he explained. "There has to be originality. The band was very original in its mixture of ingredients, very passionate and we never sold out to any current ideas of what was going on at the time. I think the band was inventive and it was honest and the music was iconic. That's what will make it transcend."

Hickey told Chuck that in the moment, they had no idea that the band would transcend like it has today. Even when they were recording Bloody Kisses, they didn't know that it would be the album that would help them break out.

"We were just having fun. Peter wanted to veer away from the hardcore screaming, he wanted to get more melodic ... It took a lot to make it, to break the album and bring it forward."

After nearly two years of touring the country playing "Buttfuck, Virginia" and "the back of a pizzeria in Arkansas," Hickey said what finally broke Type O out of that was Motley Crue.

"They released their album with [singer John Corabi] and they asked us to come out with them. The rest is history. But it took 18 months of touring like that to break it."

Kenny Hickey joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday, June 8; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand. Stream EYE AM's "Dreams Always Die With the Sun" at this location.