October Rust has more ballads and less of the doom metal sound of previous or subsequent albums.

It is the first of the band's albums with a "joke intro"; in this case, "Bad Ground", which is 38 seconds of low-level buzzing, meant to sound as if one or more audio leads is incorrectly plugged into the input jacks of an amplifier.

Another production technique employed on the album is the use of very abrupt endings and segues to a few of the songs, heard on the tracks "Green Man", "Red Water", and "Haunted".

All tracks are written by Peter Steele, except where notedOctober Rust was well received by critics.

In 2017, former Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward ranked October Rust as one of his favorite Metal albums of all time.