perfidy

Skinny Puppy, last seen freaking out parents in the days of flannel and Teen Spirit, reunited a few years ago after an acrimonious breakup and have just released their second post-breakup album, The Greater Wrong of the Right. First, the good news: on the new record, reunited Skinny Puppy principals cEvin Kay and Nivek Ogre still make intricately produced, synth-heavy industrial spook music replete with giant soundscapes, processed vocals, and lyrics about alienation, decay, and global conspiracy. However, there’s bad news too: it’s lame.
The early 1990s were a heady time for heavy music. Literally dozens of worthwhile bands were making interesting albums. From the porno-cabaret of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult to the relentless pounding of KMFDM and Front 242, not to mention the commercial crunch of Ministry and NIN, there was never a better time to be a goth. Back then, before NIN’s “Closer” got Top 40 airplay, before White Zombie rode Al Jourgenson’s and Nivek Ogre’s best ideas to platinum stardom, there was some cool music being made by guys who wore fake blood and festooned their cover art with H.R. Giegeresque tableaux. I spent countless hours in college listening to Skinny Puppy’s Too Dark Park (Nettwerk, 1990) and Last Rights (Nettwerk, 1991), two seriously creepy slices of psychosis. However, by 1993 the Pup were more concerned with drugs and side projects than with putting out good records, and they slipped completely off my radar.

When The Greater Wrong of the Right arrived in my mailbox, I was excited to see where the state of the art of industrial music now stands. Although I still pull out my industrial records from time to time (and the best of them have aged fairly well), I curious as to how Skinny Puppy had updated their sound. From the moment I looked at the cover art, however, I had misgivings. Worms, cadavers, meathooks, and a dude eating a millipede sandwich don’t exactly bring the creeps like they used to. Actually, that’s backwards. Worms, cadavers, meathooks, and a dude eating a millipede sandwich bring the creeps exactly like they used to, and that’s a little disappointing. I hoped that the Pup had learnt a few new tricks.

For better or worse, the music on The Greater Wrong of the Right lives up to the promise of the cover art. Sounding like a transmission direct from 1993, the group don’t as much reinvent as reinhabit their old sound. The risk they take in doing so is inviting comparison to their best material, not to mention the scores of groups they have influenced. The best part of their sound—the sweeping landscapes of synthesizer, loud guitar, and half-memorable hooks—has been pirated by everybody and their teenaged brother. Literally dozens of forgettable goth bands, not to mention popsters like Linkin Park and Marilyn Manson, grew up listening to the Pup. Many of them now sell millions of albums working the same territory, with perhaps a shot of teen angst taking the place of armageddon in the lyrical content. Consequently, The Greater Wrong of the Right doesn't come off so much bad as completely generic. For a band like Skinny Puppy whose stock in trade is shock and horror, this is near disaster.

To be fair, it may well just be that I’ve grown completely out of my ability to think this kind of thing is cool, but The Greater Wrong Of The Right just isn’t all that interesting. The album certainly sounds nice, full of full-stereo full-spectrum mixes, and Ogre’s thin nasal vocals hold up just the same as they have ever done. Unfortunately, the songwriting hasn’t changed in fifteen years and the lyrics, which may or not have sounded cool in 1991, now come across as deeply silly (“All of us exist in touch of deadly warming global/ and trust we must distrust the owners of the new world order”).

Maybe it’s that I’m older now and far less prone to thinking vampires are cool. Maybe it’s that Ogre and Kay are older now, stuck in the past and missing both the drugs and the production genius of Dave Ogilvie. Either way, when Ogre sings on “Ghostman,” “Attached in awe/ what a whiplash hatefilled culture of/ viruses/ born raised and infected with violent thought/ to set it off/ defend the wrong/incite the thing/to bring it down/to bring it down/to bring it down” all I can do is roll my eyes, skip ahead to the part where the guitars get real loud, and head down to the basement to see if I can find my cassette of Too Dark Park.

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