The Skinny Puppy albums I have listened to
Submitted by idlewoodarian on Fri, 08/28/2009 - 09:05
- Skinny Puppy is a Canadian electro-industrial band led by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton - producer) and Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie - singer). Other musicians have been part of the band at some times : Dave “Rave” Ogilvie has been its producer for most of the time, Dwayne Goettel has been the third member until 1995 when he died of an heroin overdose, Wilhelm Schroeder is featured on a few early recordings and later founded Front Line Assembly under the name of Bill Leeb, and finally Mark Walk, who founded ohGr with Nivek Ogre in 2001, joined the band for its return in 2003. Skinny Puppy’s sound is very dark, uses a lot of samples and scary singing. It has been a major influence for numerous industrial and electro-industrial bands such as Nine Inch Nails.
- Skinny Puppy is one of my very favourite bands and, even if I still have not listen to all of their recordings, I know some of them pretty well, and this list describes them and how good I think they are. Yeah, because there is absolutely nothing bad about Skinny Puppy’s music, everybody should know that.
- Remission (1984)
- Remission is the first official Skinny Puppy record. The band made a demo in 1983, Back & Forth, and later signed with the label Nettwerk. Remission is an EP and features two of their best songs : the classic “Smothered Hope” and the less-known “Far Too Frail”. This recording still has a post-punk, gothic and experimental sound, which is pretty particular and tends to disappear quickly in the next recordings. The “Sleeping Beast” version is the same as the one on Back & Forth. Remission is not really the best Skinny Puppy record to begin with, as it is not very accessible and sounds quite dated. But every fan should listen to it, as it depicts the very beginning of the band’s career and sound.
- Bites (1985)
- Bites is the first full-length album of Skinny Puppy. It already sounds more dance-oriented, but still very dark and industrial of course. I haven’t listened a lot to this album, so I can’t really say how good it is. It contains “Assimilate” which is another classic.
- Mind : the Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
- The second album by Skinny Puppy is maybe the one where the band starts to really approach their most known style and sound. It is more deep and dark than before, and still has great danceable tracks (the singles “Dig It” and “Stairs and Flowers”) but some songs like “Three Blind Mice” are quite sad and develop a really original atmosphere. But, again, I haven’t listened a lot to this album.
- Rabies (1989)
- Rabies is the fifth album by Skinny Puppy. I never listened to Cleanse Fold and Manipulate and VIVIsectVI which are the third and fourth albums, and Rabies is the first Skinny Puppy album that I ever listened to. At the time, Nivek Ogre developed a friendship with Al Jourgensen, the leader of the industrial metal band Ministry, as their toured together during the year. He invited him to co-produce Rabies, and this led to a major change in the sound of Skinny Puppy, only restrained to this album. Jourgensen has co-produced some of this album’s tracks which sound more like industrial rock or metal, electropunk and EBM. cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel didn’t approve of this, and this situation created tension in the band. Despite all of that, Rabies is for me one of the three best Skinny Puppy albums. It has a very hot and burning sound, and is very danceable. Tracks like “Rodent”, “Hexonxonx” or “Two Time Grime” can only make you want to move like the devil! “Fascist Jockitch” is the most Ministry influenced track, as it sounds like pure industrial metal with abrasive and ultra-fast percussions. The lyrics deal with an episode of Ogre’s life, who was once assaulted by a neo-nazi. “Tin Omen” features also heavy guitars riffs and sounds quite industrial metal-like. “Worlock” is maybe the most beautiful and moving Skinny Puppy song, and maybe the best one! Though this album has disappointed many fans, “Worlock” has always been considered as one of the best Skinny Puppy’s works. All of the seven first tracks are incredibly good and surprising, but the rest of the album is much more dark and traditional. The original version features only two tracks in this style, “Rivers” and “Choralone”, but the CD version adds two more : “Amputate” and “Spahn Dirge (Live)” which lengths sixteen minutes ! In the end, Rabies is an extremely great album and deserves a lot of attention…
- Too Dark Park (1990)
- For their sixth album, Skinny Puppy returned to a more traditional sound, extremely dark and using a lot of samples. This album is really straight-forward and contains ten excellent songs. The atmosphere is chaotic and nightmarish, reminding of horror movies. If “Spasmolytic” (the single of this album) is my favourite track, all of them are great and very mesmerizing. It’s really hard to pick a few ones from them! There’s not much I can say about this album, even though I listened to it a lot of times and that I still do quite often. Well, just dive into it, but be careful… To me, it is the first part of a diptych which will end with the next album.
- Last Rights (1992)
- This seventh album is maybe a Too Dark Park times 666, if you know what I mean. No, the Canadians have not turned satanic, but this record is pure chaos, pure darkness, pure evil. Just look at the artwork, doesn’t it remind of Bosch’s vision oh hell? It is not exactly what I see when I listen to the album, but it sure is as disturbing. Beginning by two tracks pretty sad, the last one being kind of ballad (“Killing Game”), this release is the deeper and more profound work of Skinny Puppy, and simply its masterpiece. The next tracks are fragments of chaos itself, where sonic bombing will make your ears bleed. The singing of Ogre has never been so moving, that’s right, in the middle of so much violence, pain and ugliness, Ogre and Key manage to make beauty and emotion rise. We were used to see Ogre as a sort of demon, with his modified voice, well here, he never sounded as human, and it is simply heart-rending. In the end of the album, his voice tends to disappear, letting Key with his computers and machines spin a web of samples and sounds. Again, this is the best of Skinny Puppy and tends to appear as sampling haute couture. The final tracks tend to appear as experimental industrial dark ambient, with the last one, “Download”, lasting eleven minutes. Last Rights is one of my very favourite records, the ones I listen to quite rarely, because they are just too big, too scary. Scary because it is extremely dark, and because it is pure genius.
- Back and Forth Series 2 (1992)
- This compilation features a remastered version of the original Skinny Puppy demo along with numerous previously unreleased tracks of the same era. It is the best way to see what was the band at its very beginning. I just regret that the demo tracks are not in order, meaning other tracks are placed between them. But it is a very good record, with dark ambient tracks, pre-versions, a live intro, etc.
- The Process (1996)
- The Process is the more recent Skinny Puppy album I have listened to. It features a more rock/metal/coldwave-like sound with electric guitars, but still has a dark electro base. Acoustic guitars can also be heard, which is pretty surprising but leads to very beautiful tracks. Again, Ogre’s voice is natural, he sounds really fragile and human, and it sometimes is very heart-rending. The album is very homogeneous and great from the beginning to the end. Songs like “Cult”, “Curcible” and “Candle” deserve to be in the ten or fifteen best Skinny Puppy tracks.
- To end, here is a classification of those albums, the number one being my favourite, the last one being the one I love the less…
- 1. Last Rights (1992)
- 2. The Process (1996)
- 3. Rabies (1989)
- 4. Too Dark Park (1990)
- 5. Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1986)
- 6. Remission (1984)
- 7. Bites (1985)
- 8. Back and Forth Series 2 (1992)
I am 19 years old and French, so excuse me if my English isn't perfect :) Also, I don't know much about html, so there is no image, sorry... By the way, I didn't manage to put line breaks, even with lone underscores...?