Album Review: Skinny Puppy - "Too Dark Park" (1990)

Skinny Puppy

Too Dark Park

1990

Now this is something. A list on an electronica website talking about this album called it "scarier than any black metal album", and I have to agree. Kind of disregarding Rabies, this album seems more to continue from the sound of VIVIsectVI, which was probably the best thing to do, because while lots of industrial bands would come to sound a lot like Rabies, nobody would be able to pin this sound down. This shit is hard.

Once again featuring the returning lineup of Ogre, Key, Goettel, and Ogilvie, the album's sound is dark and very intense. The beats are heavy, Ogre's voice is perhaps more distorted and robotic than usual, everything is hazy and decayed-sounding and it's perfect. Machines whir and buzz beneath heavily processed synth-pad sweeps and it creates a wonderful atmosphere, with waves of dissonant noise crashing against each other in such a way that everything sounds 'right' and yet it's not so harsh that it could be classified as a noise album (despite what some people with weak stomachs and no testicular fortitude will tell you). This was when basically (or even literally) the entire band was swimming in drugs and getting into the really negative effects of heroin addiction (in fact, the album was named after the local euphemism for a place in Chicago that Al Jourgensen would take Ogre to buy heroin), and I like to think of this as sort of an auditory equivalent of how they were feeling at the time.

The lyrics follow the band's left-leaning politics to a logical conclusion, presenting tracks with lyrics about environmentalism and so on in a very apocalyptic manner. This is pretty much the last time they'd be singing about that sort of thing until The Greater Wrong of the Right 14 years later, but either way it's always been a lot less obnoxious than say Ministry because Ogre's lyrics are so cryptic and abstract anyway.

I suppose there could be a comparison made to the previous album, in that, following the band's tradition of evolving their sound constantly, they go from Rabies' cyberpunk sound to beyond cyberpunk - into some new, otherworldly place where the electronic synth sounds and characteristic samples are emitting from beneath layers of organic material and through the fog of a panicked, alienated, drug-addled consciousness. It's a Shadowrun campaign with David Cronenberg as the DM. It's a live-action version of Akira directed by Takashi Miike. It's a trip.

This album is among my favorite of 1990 and altogether one of my favorite industrial and electronica albums. It's not hard to see why. You may not be too fond of this at first, especially if it's your first outing with Skinny Puppy or industrial in the first place, but perhaps it will grow on you, like it did with me - I never disliked it or anything, but I seem to like it more the more time passes. In fact, I think I'm gonna go listen now.

RATING: 5/5

Album Review: Skinny Puppy - "VIVIsectVI" (1988)

Skinny Puppy

VIVIsectVI

1988

Well, this album is an interesting case. This was one of the first industrial albums I ever heard, and, strangely enough, it didn't quite click with me at first. I heard some more radio-friendly NIN stuff, freaked out about the awesome use of electronics, looked up industrial music, and dove straight into this album, seeing that SP were a big influence on NIN and picking their highest-rated album on the music site I was on. I wasn't sure what I was listening to, and though I liked little bits of it, I couldn't wrap my head around it, and thought it was horrible and scary and headache-inducing, with weird Cobra Commander vocals. I stopped listening to SP and went a while ignoring most industrial music. Then a few years later when I got into Marilyn Manson and more into NIN, and started slowly working into less-mainstream industrial stuff, worming through stuff like Throbbing Gristle and Clock DVA and developing a taste for the stranger stuff, I gave SP another chance and was blown the fuck away. I still hold them to a very high level of respect as real musical innovators.

It's kind of weird... I kind of relate several different SP albums to different film genres, for some reason. I relate Bites to old-school sci-fi, Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse to ghost movies, Cleanse, Fold & Manipulate to grungy crime thrillers like Henry or Driller Killer, Too Dark Park to end-of-the-world and post-apocalypse scenarios, and VIVIsectVI to dark cyberpunk and/or biopunk stuff, like Videodrome or Akira. This album follows in the structure of most of the previous stuff, but as with most of their albums before and since, the album evolves from the previous album's sound, edging ever in a different direction. This album features a thick, heavy wall of sound, even more harsh and nightmarish than the last (but still nowhere near as insane as Too Dark Park or Last Rights). With the reliable, sturdy line-up of Nivek Ogre, cEvin Key, Dwayne Goettel, and producer/secret fourth member David Ogilvie, which is a line-up we'll be seeing an awful lot of.

This album has a very gloomy, smoky, grimy sound compared to Cleanse, Fold & Manipulate (not to say that album didn't have one as well). The very cyberpunk-sounding synths, often sounding broken or warped in some way, fighting through harsh percussion, lo-fi samples, and Ogre's tortured rambling, strongly evokes visions well-suited to the realities of things like Akira or Blade Runner or Aeon Flux or Transmetropolitan. Crumbling buildings, others with a postmodern design sensibility, red skies, dark clouds, neon lights and hedonism everywhere, futuristic advances in technology that all suck, polluted forests, heavy atmosphere, political unrest, gangs everywhere with 80's-style fashion, futuristic grotesque cybernetic organisms and mutations... It's a very violent sound, and it rarely lets up. As with the best of Puppy, production plays a heavy role in giving the album its attitude; Ogre's voice is stretched like an accordion and put through an auditory woodchipper to give it a perfect evil rasp, the bass is compressed into brief, urgent, sinister-sounding plunks, the dated synths often reminiscent of video games are put through filters and pushed to the limits of impact, and everything sounds like an amazing drug haze. Tracks like "Dogshit" swagger through it confidently, then we're met with increasingly slow and sinister ones like "VX Gas Attack" and "Harsh Stone White", then a song that sounds like it belongs on the previous album with "Testure", and some amazingly creepy soundscapes like "Fritter (Stella's Home)" that give early hints at the Last Rights sound.

I personally cannot sress how amazing I think this album is. It hits every note right, it's dark and spooky and somehow the sound has rarely been replicated that closely (compared to other SP albums) and even more rarely done well. It's very multi-layered and easy to go back to because you're always finding new stuff in the mix. I think it's a classic industrial album, as well as a classic electronic album in general. I greatly, greatly recommend it, but my only warning is that it's not the most accessible thing, so you may want to get some other exposure to the genre before you give this a whirl if you're new to industrial or experimental music. Otherwise, it's great. Perfect for a Shadowrun session at least!

RATING: 5/5

Album Review: Pigface - "Fook" (1992)

Pigface

Fook

1992

Okay... Here's where it starts getting difficult.

Unlike what seems like the whole rest of industrial fandom, I never swooned over this album. Sure, I liked it. Didn't regret buying it or anything, especially for how cheap I got it. But for all the fuss over it (and the great number of talented musicians), it left me... underwhelmed. I'm giving it another go as I type this, so perhaps my mind will be changed.

Unlike Gub, which was very lo-fi and experimental and sparse and drum-oriented and basically sounded like what you'd get if some famous industrial and punk musicians decided to record pieces of songs in each other's basements between tours, this one sounds like Grand Central by comparison. Much more shit going on... And not necessarily in a good way, like the best Skinny Puppy or NIN albums.

One thing about this album is that it has more of a stable lineup and more personnel on each song... The sound is more standard and song-based and full of guitars... Bill Rieflin is gone, but in his absence, we get a fairly consistent group of instrumentalists that includes old pal William Tucker as well as Paul Raven of Killing Joke and Andrew Weiss of Rollins Band, so it's not a bad trade. En Esch plays guitar on literally half the album too, so cool beans.

The album kicks off with "Alles Ist Mine", the second installment of Pigface's series of "En Esch rasps over frenzied drumming" songs... But this one has some funky bass, kickass guitars and is just better-produced. It gets a thumbs-up from me.

"Ten Ground and Down" is an interesting moody cello-based track that features new frequent Pigface vocalist Lesley Rankine sharing vocal duties once again with the inimitable Chris Connelly. I never paid this track much heed before, but it's quite good.

"Seven Words" is a noisy track sung by Mary Byker from some noise rock band called Gaye Bykers on Acid. Reminds me of a cross between Big Black and Chemlab (the latter of which at least makes sense, what with William Tucker tearing it up on guitar). Decent but not essential in the least.

"Insemination" is a drum-heavy track with the return of Nivek Ogre. That Matt Schulz guy providing some cool militaristic samples. It actually sounds like a more polished version of something we would have gotten on Gub, with maybe a dash of what we'd get from Rx later on. Nice track.

"Hips, Tits, Lips, Power!" is a strange little track with Lesley Rankine and Mary Byker singing about, well, guess what? It's not a bad track but it kind of drags. I love the guitars though.

"Satellite" is a kind of generic-sounding Mary Byker-fronted song. It's not bad at all, it's just... nice. At this point several tracks on the album are starting to bleed together from sounding similar, and this is one of them.

"I'm Still Alive" is an odd, bouncy number with Esch and Ogre... I like it, it doesn't differ too much from some of these other songs but it's fun and has some interesting sounds and samples.

"Auto Hag" is yet another Mary Byker track and basically has the band doing a staticy noise-rock/metal thing. It's unfortunately kind of meh.

"Go!" is another Esch/Ogre track and it's decent... Sounds like a lesser outtake from Gub. Cool but inessential.

"I Can Do No Wrong" has David Wm. Sims of The Jesus Lizard playing us out while Chris Connelly gives us that heavenly voice one more time. It's pretty stripped-down and basic but atmospheric at the same time. Sounds kind of like what The Jesus Lizard would be if it had a crooning Scottish vocalist, more polished production and some jazzy drumming. One of the better ones from this album.

So, that's the album. One of the biggest changes I've noticed is that, I guess thanks to having two bassists, the bass is extremely prominent. My main gripe is that the album kind of runs short on ideas. Many of the songs sound very similar and get kind of dull... A problem that would eventually be inverted in later albums then there's very little stylistic consistency within an album.

Overall... Decent, but one of Pigface's lesser albums, I think. I still don't see what all the fuss is about.

RATING: 2.5/5

Album Review: Pigface - "Gub" (1990)

Pigface

Gub

1990

So, here's the first Pigface album. It took me a while, but I finally got around to getting and listening to their albums, which was not the easiest thing in the world - a sad commentary in and of itself. I don't generally do this, but because of the nature of this band, I'm going to be doing this track-by-track. Shit's gonna get long-winded in here.

First, some backstory: Pigface was the brainchild of tragically hip egomaniac poser and rivethead folk hero Martin Atkins (known at this point for being in Public Image Ltd. for a chunk of the 80's, and being in Ministry and Killing Joke for about five minutes apiece) and Bill Rieflin of Ministry and Revolting Cocks (though it seems apparent that Rieflin was mostly being dragged along for the ride). Atkins had this grandiose scheme, see, to create this act with no sturdy lineup, who went back to the punk and industrial agendas of total disregard for song structure or audience expectations or doing shit that other bands did. This approach was not nearly as successful as Atkins expected it to be, but they cranked out some decent tunes at least. And here we are with their first record, made by the two boys (plus indie asshole hero Steve Albini) with a bunch of their buddies adding some vocals and extra instrumentation.

The first track, "Tapeworm", is a great success right out the gate. Nivek Ogre (of Skinny Puppy fame) delivers an impressive screeching vocal while Steve Albini drops a dirty, sauntering bassline and the Atkins/Rieflin duo gives us the expected awesome drumwork (which is one of the few consistently good things on this album).

The second track, "The Bushmaster", is pretty good as well. The boys do a good job with making a minimalistic setup sound strong - it's just Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow's usual demented rambling backed by some frenzied drums (plus some odd sound effect tape loops supplied in a cameo by Trent Reznor, apparently).

"Cylinder Head World" is where shit starts getting weird and reservations about the quality of the album begin creeping in. It's nearly four sparse minutes of random sound effect punctuated by silence. Stuff like someone sawing at some guitar strings, someone playing a bassline in the distance, some feedback noises, I dunno. If it had some kind of even minimalistic music behind it, I would be more forgiving, but as-is, it sounds like someone shuffling about in the studio and tuning the instruments unknowingly with the mic still on. According to Chris Connelly, this was an attempt by Martin Atkins to be all rebellious and uber-industrial by doing true anti-music. We're not impressed, Martin.

However, disappointment from this track is mopped away once we hear "Point Blank", one of my favorite things Pigface ever released. It's a very alternative-rock-ish track with a wonderful Bowie-esque croon from diverse singer-songwriter & Ministry/Revolting Cocks collaborator Chris Connelly, and some really nice guitar work from Albini. It's a wonderful song, and it's not even very 'industrial'-sounding. It's kind of like a more stripped-down and overall better-sounding version of something we'd have gotten from Murder Inc. It'll be hard to top this'un.

Now comes what is probably Pigface's most famous song... "Suck", starring Trent Reznor on vox and giving the ever-awesome Paul Barker a great supporting role on bass. Now, don't get me wrong, I like this song - I like the dusty bass, I like the marching-drums percussion, but the production sucks and something doesn't sound right about it. It sounds kinda naked and, well, like an unfinished demo or something (reportedly at Steve Albini's insistence, as Trent had some electronics and other things planned that Albini put the kibosh on). Because of this, I tend to prefer NIN's cover of the song, as it sounds more fully realized to me.

"Symphony for Taps" is another 'hey guys, look at me destroying the system!' track, but slightly more tolerable than the first. Samples of running water with a headache-inducing repeated synth string(?)

"The Greenhouse" is actually kind of good, and the first track on here made solely by the Atkins/Rieflin/Albini trio that I can say that about. It's an instrumental featuring jazz drums and weird screaming electronic noises. I like it.

"Little Sisters" brings Connelly back for another go. The song itself is mostly boring but it has a nice dual-guitar attack from Bill Rieflin and ill-fated WaxTrax-era guitarist William Tucker.

"Tailor Made" is another fairly decent track, starring Paul Barker on bass and lead vocals. It's got an awesome funky bassline and it makes me sad that he didn't sing on more Ministry stuff.

"War Ich Nicht Immer Ein Guter Junge? War Ich Nicht Immer Schoen und Nett? Ich Zerpfluckte Niemals Eine Spinne - War Niemals Frech und Stahl" (you think the title's long enough?) brings En Esch of KMFDM into the fold... Unfortunately the track doesn't do much for me. It's the formula of "Esch rasps over some frenetic drums" (also featuring an annoying electronic drone in this incarnation) that the band would revisit a few times on later albums and do better.

"Blood and Sand" is a very cool and interesting track with an ominous buildup and some creepy, heavily-processed vocals by Chris Connelly again. Oh, and Matt Schulz from that band Lab Report contributes some electronics work or something. I'd love to hear more like this.

The album proper closes with "Weightless", another decent track in the vein of "Point Blank", but more metal and featuring Barker on bass. Not too shabby.

Following that, we get some remixes that mostly add extra punch to aspects of the album, plus an inexplicable shortened version of "Suck" as a hidden track. Huh?

Altogether, it's not too shabby an album. Fairly inconsistent, but nothing compared to how much so the band would be getting in subsequent outings. I know I give Atkins and the gang a lot of shit but it's all in good fun... I think I'm one of the few people who would actually say they prefer this to pretty much any Pigface album, including Fook. Something about the lo-fi experimental feel to it appeals to me, as does its crossovers into Big Black/Jesus Lizardy noise rock territory.

So... this is probably a good starting point with Pigface, because if you fall in love with their later stuff, you may end up underwhelmed - this lacks the busy production and buttloads of guest appearances that the others feature. It kind of stands alone in their discography really... I mean, I don't necessarily dislike what the band has become, but imagine what would have happened if Atkins wasn't such a repulsive dick and he was able to keep most of these guys around long enough to want to make more music in this vein with him...

RATING: 3.5/5

Dreams #2

Welcome to round two, kiddies! Can you dig it?

Our new neighbor is a friendly young guy who just came in from England and is in America for the first time (and has an odd resemblance to Tim Roth). I become close friends with him, and we spend a lot of time getting high and playing videogames. One evening, we decide to go to Chuck-E-Cheese (the top floor of which is a casino, complete with guys in the character suits handing out booze). While there, I excuse myself to the restroom. Because of a drug I had taken earlier that day, my piss is bright pink and smells strongly of paint and Pepto-Bismol. It also stings horribly. This is a regular symptom of the particular drug I took. The security cameras that the restaurant has in the restrooms sees this, and as soon as I leave the restroom, I am approached by security guards who want me to come with them. My friend sees this, and reveals his shotgun, tossing me another one. We rob the place, but before we can leave, some of the guys in character suits appear with heavy weaponry, initiating a huge firefight. My friend is shot and killed, but I escape.

I died and went to Heaven, which was like a big quiet beach resort. I got to hang out with Divine and Hunter S. Thompson, the three of us deciding to start a talk show where we interviewed famous dead people like Kurt Cobain and JFK.

I was staying at the beach, got stalked by Kenny Loggins, who turned out to be a demon, (he teleported the hotel out into the middle of the ocean and made us get attacked by giant carnivorous manta rays), only to be rescued by Sleazy Peter Christopherson, Nivek Ogre, Trent Reznor and, oddly, one of the girls from PuffyAmiYumi, with Reznor getting killed and those other guys having a tribute concert, playing NIN songs in his honor.

I’m the leader of a mercenary squad, and the mission is to assassinate Jabba the Hutt before he can finance another Special Edition re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy by George Lucas (one of the potential changes being “Bart Simpson shoots first”). We find Jabba’s secret base of operations by looking at his MySpace page. When we get there, however, he is expecting us, and we are captured and subjected to horrifyingly gruesome tortures, such as trapping one of the team members in a paralyzed, still position and having buzzsaws slowly approach him from every direction (something like half-an-inch per second) – both sides, underneath, and above – until the saws collide, no matter what is between them all. I convince one of his Twi'lek cocktail waitresses to free me, and then I sneak into his docking bay and steal one of his ships. Before I fly away, I turn around and blast the hell out of Jabba's island base and eventually sinking it.

Scientists determine that, due to global warming, we only have one year left before the end of the world. There are riots, mass suicides, and everybody generally becomes an unfriendly asshole. During the last week, I go to the mall and have a huge fight (literally, we’re beating the hell out of each other) with my friend Lauren Carraman over the last tub of ice cream (the kicker being that, in real life, Lauren is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known). On the final day, I go to a symbolic funeral for Earth (taking place in someone’s apartment), where we are all going to spend our final hours alive. As I’m driving there, the tires on my car melt, so I have to get out and walk. Birds have fallen out of the sky and melted onto the sidewalks and there are flaming pieces of paper blowing in the breeze. Once I get to the party, we all drink wine and eat turkey and ice cream while wearing black suits and sunglasses. When the final minute comes, we all do a countdown (kind of like they do on New Year’s Eve) as the world goes up in a cinder.

That's all for now. Tune in next episode - same bat-time, same bat-channel!