Just realised there isn't a dedicated thread for this band. I just picked up BRAP and so far ... it's awesome! What are your favorite Skinny Puppy albums? For me they're the pinnacle of industrial music. I haven't heard an album that was short of spectacular to date, even the more recent efforts like HanDover are great. Last Rights and Too Dark Park are no doubt their finest achievements though.
VIVIsectVI (1988) is the album that introduced me to them and will always be the standard by which I judge everything else they do.
Last Rights and Too Dark Park are also my favorites. Just brutal and uncompromising...much "heavier" than most metal bands. Killing Game
shortED: i only got in too the band's EP's back-in-the-day; just way too much new dance music at the time of albums. So, the "Warlock" [1990] EP comes too mind, w/the "Goth" classic LP version + "Warlock [ED]". Of course this band was BIG on the dancefloors as "New Wave" clubs went "Industrial" in the late 80's & still playED at "Goth/Dark Wave/Industrial" clubs today. 1st time i 1st [recognizED] heard em, walkED up too the DJ booth at the "Trocadero" [now "The Grand"] in "The City" & askED the DJ Damon who it was. [ Damon is still spinning a "Bondage A Go Go"/diff club tho] When he told me "Skinny Puppy" i said 'no, that hard rocking song'; just couldn't fit the "puppy" name w/the 'heavy' sound. This band, along w/others like "Front 242", were taking the "Pop" sound of "New Wave" & crunching it up w/the harder "Techno" sound of the day. Still danceable; butt you'd better get on your "Doc's" & stomp!
Skinny puppy is one of my favorite bands , an intelligent band which explored sounds boundaries and creates music which transmits aggression and also beauty. For me listening to their music is always a fascinating experience which is a journey through variety of feelings and sights. I will never forget the first time I heard worlock at a club and when the powerful and beautiful Chorus arrived I shouted to my friends : " listen , this is the cry of the Robots " ... the chorus of Worlock Built from waves of beautiful synth lines and an amazing vocoder effects on the vocals , Nivek Ogre singing has powerful and hypnotic sadness which made this song a masterpiece. The first Skinny Puppy album I heard was Remission and bites which remains to this day one of my favorites. My favorite Skinny Puppy albums : every album they did from 1984 until 1992 ( Last Rights included From the magnificent VIVIsectVI Skinny Puppy - Testure
Emotion inducing is the only way I can describe them, Rodent, Grave Wisdom, Deep Down Trauma Hounds and the ones above are my short list of favorites
Every album has a different atmosphere , they are one of the most talented bands I had the pleasure to find out .
Well, I got through BRAP. Awesome album. The first CD might be the better one, but I'll need to give it another listen. Not enough fans of this band here!
I was pretty into the Puppies during the '80s, up to the Rabies album, after which my music interests focused elsewhere. Still haven't heard the last three of their original albums. I recall the first time I heard them as a kid, seeing the video for "Far Too Frail" on MuchMusic one evening. It was certainly a moment, this dyspeptic synth pop shrouded in this industrial gothic imagery, but a cousin had got it on tape and after a few more viewings to get our heads around it I picked up the Remission EP soon after, and then everything else they put out over the next few years. Also, my Mom can attest that they were actually very nice boys under the leather and blood splatter.
Here's something that might be of historical interest for Puppy fans: as some of you might know, Skinny Puppy was a spin-off of an Ultravox-esque synth band called Images In Vogue, who had a few hits in Canada during the early-mid '80s and whom cEvin Key quit just when they were starting to move. Here's the band's first video, for 1982's "Call It Love", where you can see the former Kevin Crompton manning the drum pads in the back. Also: so, do you figure the vocalist got pushed into a lot of lockers back in high school?
The only one I have is "Puppy Gristle" because of the connection to Genesis P. Orridge (who I collect absolutely everything by).
Got Bites today. Not their greatest but an interesting first step into the future world of Skinny Puppy. I think Back & Forth is the only '80s album of theirs that I'm missing...
Too Dark Park is definitely my fave album, but my all-time favourite song is VX Gas Attack. Really captures the horror of chemical warfare used in the middle east. Brutal pounding rhythms and very dense construction - try it on headphones to catch all the details.
My wife loved, loved, LOVED Skinny Puppy! I, on the other hand, never gave them the time of day! When we met, we were working together at a DC record store when Ministry's "Land Of Rape & Honey" came out. We stood in the record store listening to it,.... STUNNED! I asked her, "Is this what Skinny Puppy sounds like?", and she said, "Oh ,hell no!"... Of course, when Al produced "Rabies", I was on board the Puppy train!
I wouldn't say SP were a spin-off of Images in Vogue, Cevin Key just played for them before dedicating more time and energy to SP. As far as SP's albums go, I love them all (well, the ones before they reunited), but love Last Rights the most. Plus as far as Cevin Key goes, the man is a workaholic. He consistently puts out albums for a variety of side projects, and all of them are as good as his work with Skinny Puppy. Download, Plateau, Tear Garden are in my and a lot of people's opinions every bit as great as SP.
I enjoyed my share of Skinny Puppy in my day...saw them live on the Two Dark Park tour...crazy show with a meat tree. I really liked the spin off band Cyberaktif.
Perhaps you 'hard-core's' may know: I remember hearing, many years ago, that members of Skinny Puppy had felt the presence of Snakefinger's ghost! Maybe in a hotel room, or something... maybe I'm remembering it wrong....... Anybody else hear of this?
I went through a big Skinny Puppy phase in high school. My absolute favorite Skinny Puppy releases are Bites and Remission - these are the two I still listen to the most to this day. I admit that I prefer their earlier stuff because it tends to be a bit more melodic, a bit more song-oriented. But I like everything up through Cleanse, Fold, and Manipulate. I liked Too Dark Park quite a bit when it came out, but even back in the 90s I couldn't get into the stuff they did after that. (Never cared much for VIVIsectVI or Rabies either, to be honest). I saw them on their Too Dark Park tour. That was a brutal, chaotic, crazy show. I remember getting some drops of mystery slime on my forehead from something Ogre was doing, since I was standing at the front.
There was a clip of them in the same hotel room not long after Snakefinger died, saying this. From a tour doc.
Other member of Images In Vogue, the guitarist Don Gordon Established the great Canadian electro- industrial band: NUMB. NUMB created one of the most genius and complex electro- industrial albums called Death On The Installment Plan (1993)
