Skinny Puppy: Classic or Dud?

isn't "hell-o deathday" the text that used to be etched on the runout grooves on some of the older puppy vinyls? my memory is a bit fuzzy at this point.

i think the "warped pop" comments on this thread are spot on, but what really gets me about the new one is the bass, drums, and overall cohesion. the vocals are also great.

I do seem to recall it appearing etched on vinyl too, but I never trusted my memory very much either. It doesn't appear on my copies.

I'm so glad when others can see the "warped pop."

Awesome. I was the victim of the cancelled London shows around 1990 (Godflesh were supposed to support at one of them, I think) and have been waiting 15 years for this. My memory must be worse than I thought, because the only songs I could pick out that I knew were "VX Gas Attack" and "Harsh Stone White" (which winz, as it's my favourite Puppy track EVAH!) - unless they did an entire show based around the new album? And I did have to leave during the first encore...

Ogre started off in a costume that looked a bit like Oderus Urunguous' old one crossed with Sauron's armour, but shed it after a couple of songs to start with the goop. Cool bit where he shot blood at soldiers on the backdrop like he was playing some sort of giant video game.

But aces - despite me being practically the oldest person there, and the only one who hadn't bought their entire outfit from Camden Market.

While SP's "industrial" soundscaping, interest in extremes of human behavior, and horrorshow aesthetic may have been shopworn from go, their production was truly groundbreaking. Whatever you thought of Bites, the sheer sound of that record was remarkable in 1985 (especially on The Choke).

That's why, while it's clearly formative, Bites is the only Skinny Puppy record I harbor a lingering affection for. I'll listen to certain tracks from Mind: TPI and Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate occasionally, but after that, it's a wash...

Last Rights and Too Dark Park are the cream of the crop IMO.

Has anyone watched the DVD of the 'greater wrong of the right' tour? I was expecting the worst, but it was actually pretty wicked. Wish I had a chance to see 'em live.

this song is beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFIlhgH4weE

did they have any other songs like this?

what's the backwards music at the end of "sleeping beast"?

awesome?

it's a backwards sample of a song. sounds like could be 70s rock or something. anyone know?

wow, playing Bites for the first time in years and it holds up astonishingly well

"Dead Lines" is a beast of a song

still bleating about these guys being way ahead of their time to people who don't care. unfairly ghettoized with the Industrial moniker. Too Dark Park and especially Last Rights feature some genuinely fucking wild, impressive production work.

you know what doesn't get mentioned enough, is Download

i knew a hella lot of industro-heads into Download in the mid-90s, haven't heard that name dropped in some years!

Crazy things, soft spoken..override.

Meanwhile, the new album's quite good! They seem to have found just the right balance for themselves and their age to keep making it work in a subtler but still textured and engaging way.

i honestly have not given any of their newer music a chance. i'm horrible i know.
want to recommend a specific track or two?

Well this newest, Handover, comes out next week, so you might enjoy "Cullorblind" and "Wavy" as 'newer' songs, to my ear, while "Point" and "Vyrisus" work in slightly older forms. There's less of the careening chaos now but Key is still a sharp as hell arranger.

Thermo, did you ever hear "Pro-Test" off of Greater Right of the Wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXT6KrX-PF4

yup. Greater Right... is sort of when i was decided i wasn't interested in the newer stuff!

Classic: Skinny Puppy and the Too Dark Park artwork

Dud: People who taken part in the thread devoted to saying Skinny Puppy art was especially bad, TDP in particular.

I had toyed with posting in the Bad Album Covers thread but it just makes me overwhelmingly angry that so many people dismiss so much eccentric strange beauty as ugly and praise really bland art as "iconic" and "classy". I love a lot of that weird old painted art of old prog albums with touches of surrealism, Chameleons album covers and lots of other similar stuff. It isnt always to my liking but I respect it because it has personality. I particularly like the Semiramis album cover.

...but yeah, I only have TDP and am looking forward to more!

New single, "paraGun", off the forthcoming LP, Weapon.

Not bad.

http://youtu.be/kUCatOT1D-Q

you know what, aside from "Worlock" and "Tin Omen" Rabies is kind of boring

but "Worlock" and "Tin Omen" are career-defining masterpieces on par with their early work so it all kind of comes out in the positive column anyway

I thought that was the general consensus on that album?

Yeah, I'm just going through the album again for the first time in a long time and reading my positive comments upthread and thinking "man, it wasn't just Ministry that suffered from Al's fall-off"

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/07/skinny-puppy-payment-guantanamo

Wow, hope they get the money.

can't get enough of remission and bites

I wore a Skinny Puppy shirt to a Christmas party last night.

I'm long overdue for a re-listen to the entire discography. when I first got into hard industrial, Too Dark Park was my entry point.

"Tormentor" is still my fav Skuppy track.

Also my first SP album. Had no frame of reference for it and it kinda blew my mind. Spasmolytic is pure, driving evil and has always been my go-to on that one.

I jumped off the SP wagon in 1990 so know and love everything up until Too Dark Park. What is essential that i have missed?

aside from Last Rights, not a lot tbh.

Too Dark Park and Last Rights probably them at the top of their game, so yeah, those two. Can ignore the rest.

The album that "Pro-Test" is on is pretty good

damn after bites these guys get ugly as hell don't they

i'm at vivisectvi which is a great record but my favorite part is the second half where they remember they're in the club ("who's laughing now?" -> "testure")

my favorite so far is mind: the perpetual intercourse which was unexpected because that album freaked me out so bad in college that i threatened to never get into skinny puppy

Last rights is incredible. Check the track “scrapyard”

i can't wait to get it! all i want to do is listen to skinny puppy

M:TPI is great

Last Rights is the only Skinny Puppy I actually own on CD, yet is probably my least favourite of the run from 84-92 (although I haven't actually heard Too Dark Park or Cleanse Fold and Manipulate tbf). I still like it. but Remission is amazing. Bites/Mind/Vivisectvi/Rabies are all great

Too Dark Park > Last Rights

cleanse fold and manipulate blows me away bc it has stuff as accessible and funky as "addiction" and "tear or beat" and "deep down trauma hounds" sitting near "draining faces," which is maybe the song i'd use to introduce someone to the concept of "industrial," it embodies so many aspects of the genre while going at least as hard as throbbing gristle, and "the mourn," which just sounds straight up satanic to me. different rooms in a club in hell: the album

i love the ... playfulness (?) of the sampling in "anger"

Cleanse Fold and Manipulate was my SP entry point; american bradass nails all that is great about that album.

It is one of thee masterclasses in how to use a sampler creatively.

is there a particular reason that, after three albums in hell, rabies feels like the long-awaited sequel to bites