The Origin of the Feces

The album was recorded in a studio but produced to sound "live" 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.

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

- "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" = "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else"

- "Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10-8 cm-3 gm-1 sec-2" = "Gravity"

- "Prelude to Agony" = "Pain"

- "Xero Tolerance" = "Kill You Tonight"

One song, "Are You Afraid?", is an original composition that the band played live but had never recorded in the 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 re-titled "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 is credited as a producer for the record.

The original cover of the album has a closeup of Steele's anal sphincter.[3] 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.

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.

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

• Peter Steele – lead vocals, bass guitar
• Kenny Hickey – backing vocals, co-lead vocals (on "Hey Pete"), electric guitar
• Josh Silver – backing vocals, keyboards, sound effects
• Sal Abruscato – drums, percussion
• Johnny Kelly – drums, percussion (on "Paranoid")