Peter Steele of Type O Negative, Definitely Dead

Rumor gone wild or is the angry, giant frontman of Type O Negative truly dead? From the LA Late Blog:

Peter Steele is dead at 48, news that Peter Steele has died confirmed Thursday. Peter Steele’s cause of death was heart failure learn fans today.
Here is the latest.
Peter Steele’s death has been confirmed by several individuals since last night, despite no official statement from family members. Statements of death come from fellow bandmate Kenny Hickey, Fuse Host Mistress Juliya, and a suggestive posting on the Type O Negative website.
Fans are reacting to the shocking news through a surge in twitter posts early today.
Foirst, Fuse VJ MistressJuliya posted on twitter last night the following messages: “Today is a very sad day in metal…” “End of an era.” “Peter Steele passed today. I loved my friend…our idol…my heart is with his band and family…” “@msjenncity (Steele) passed of heart failure. Just spoke to Kenny (Hickey of Type O Negative).”
Second, TypeONegative.com includes the following message today “The forums have been re-opened. Please play nice and expect statements from the band and family later today. Thank you for your understanding and support.”
In 2007, Steele made press by indicating he had now become an atheism. He told Decibel magazine as the time:
“There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what’s after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it’s a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can’t believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.”
Funeral arrangements have not been announced. Peter Steele will be greatly missed. Send your love.

But at the same time, we get this from Blabbermouth:

Despite a message on the band’s official web site that seems to suggest otherwise, TYPE O NEGATIVE frontman Peter Steele HAS NOT DIED.
The band, who are famous for their dark sense of humor, have spent much of the last few months preparing material for their SPV Records debut, which is expected to be recorded later in the year.
TYPE O NEGATIVE cancelled their U.S. tour last fall in order to allow Steele to undergo further tests after “undisclosed anomalies” were discovered during a medical exam. A February 11, 2005 update on Peter’s condition from TYPE O NEGATIVE drummer Johnny Kelly stated, “There really isn’t much to report other than he’s doing fine and his health is improving daily.”
TYPE O NEGATIVE, whose first album, “Slow, Deep and Hard”, was issued in 1991, fulfilled their contractual obligations to longtime label Roadrunner with the release of 2003′s “Life Is Killing Me”. That album debuted on The Billboard 200 chart at No. 39 in June 2003 after registering a first-week sales tally of 27,023 copies. TYPE O NEGATIVE’s best-selling album to date is 1994′s “Bloody Kisses”, which has shifted nearly a million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Well that’s just no fun. I wanna know if the man is dead or not! I was once a Type O fan, until I saw them in Pittsburgh…my god, maybe nine years ago? Peter Steele is a flat out racist and that’s not okay. He said some overtly xenophobic things. In a venue full of people. I remember looking at the people around me and them looking back in a moment of, “Did that just really happen”? I never bought an album after that. I’ll admit, I still own everything I bought before then and break it out from time to time, but never again will I finance that band. Well, I guess now, I really don’t need to. It’s kind of a shame that all that hotness was wasted on a white supremacist.
Weird to think about Peter Steele as a dead guy, though. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
***Update***
Well, that didn’t take long. Confirmed by Blabbermouth:

TYPE O NEGATIVE keyboardist Josh Silver has confirmed to BLABBERMOUTH.NET that the band’s frontman, Peter Steele, passed away yesterday (Wednesday, April 14) at the age of 48. No official cause of death has yet been released, but it is believed that Steele died of heart failure.
According to unconfirmed reports, Steele had been ill for days leading up to his death.
Mistress Juliya (a.k.a. Juliya Chernetsky) of Fuse TV broke the news on her Twitter page last night, stating that she spoke to TYPE O NEGATIVE guitarist Kenny Hickey just before midnight New York time, and that Kenny confirmed that the rumors were true.
Back in 2005, many people were shocked when they logged on to the TYPE O NEGATIVE web site and saw a gravestone with the words “Peter Steele – 1962 – 2005 …. Free At Last” carved on it. According to Epinions.com, there were rumors at the time that Steele was sick (with anything from cancer to AIDS), was on his deathbed, attempted suicide … and the list goes on. Needless to say, it turned out that Steele was very much alive and the gravestone was merely a joke, albeit one the wasn’t viewed as being in particularly good taste.
Steele was born Petrus T. Ratajczyk on January 4, 1962 in Brooklyn, New York. He stood 6′ 7″ (201 cm) tall, and had a low, bass-heavy voice, which was one of the most recognizable features in TYPE O NEGATIVE’s music.
Before forming TYPE O NEGATIVE, Steele played for the metal group FALLOUT and the thrash band CARNIVORE.