REVIEWS:
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COMMENTS
Greetings,
Decent job on the reviews, hope you guys get to the rest of thier discography. The reason why Last Rights is 'off' according to your review is that when cevin and oghr set about that album they had horrible arguements and fights over the direction of the music. Thats why there is so much discord. It is not an album to be listened to sober or in a good mood. It is purely experimental and not to be taken lightly. If you dont get it, then you arent suppose to. Its an acquired taste. Also, talking with cevin (so many years ago *sigh*) he commented that after Too Dark Park he was a little hesitant himself on where to go with SP. Too Dark Park, IMHO has yet to be matched in its incredible depths by any band in the genre, or any other for that matter. SP is getting back together! Also, the Process is mostly crap and dismissed in industrial circles. Check out Download from cevin and if you can find it WELT by oghr.
Thanks and keep on keepin on!
Vince
(reviewed by Nick Karn)
A somewhat interesting debut, though I'm not exactly sure what it looked like in its' initial configuration, what with the issue I've heard being something like a combination of original album tracks, a few songs off their first EP Remission and other stuff that I'm not sure of the origins. Damn industrial bands and their confusing discography. But regardless, the stuff on this over hour-long listening experience is mostly kinda neat. Basically, the 'songs', if the term can indeed be applied to some of this stuff, are a combination of hard-edged dancey synth pop, scary drum sounds ala Joy Division, ambient near instrumentals and such atmospheric passages, an almost spoken delivery in the vocals, occasional experimentation with loops and samples, and other such electronic/industrial related things. Industrial music, man! Forget worrying about the melodies when listening to this stuff, and just concentrate on the unsettling atmosphere, with Nivek Ogre's vocal growls and such, and prepare yourself for an intriguing experience.
Actually, there is one song on here that totally kicks my ass, and that's the absolute classic nearly 7 minute opener "Assimilate" - there are so many neat things going on for such a repetitively structured song, from the pulsating keyboards, the absolutely menacing vocal growls over an oddly catchy melody (and I dig how the backing vocals make the frightening rhythm even more so) the ascending, dramatic synth melody in the refrain, the subtle noises and embellishments throughout that consistently pop up... this is fantastic. But as is the case with such maddeningly inconsistent musical genres such as this one, most of the rest of the album seems like tuneless noise at first, but give it time. Often, there aren't really any coherent melodies or lyrics being sung, there are a lot of noises and screaming, the arrangements often take one key instrumental melody, repeat it to death and gradually add things to it, and... well, let's just say it's really not accessible stuff.
But yet, while it can be a chore to listen to this crap straight through, I do like the album overall, as hard as it is to remember a lot of it. "Dead Lines" is in kind of the same dancey mold as "Assimilate", only less melodic, and a lot more harsh and layered (still good, though), "The Choke" is pretty convincing, with eerie samples at the beginning and an almost horror-movie intensity.throughout the entire thing, and "Falling" makes an interesting attempt at conveying its' title through the atmosphere, with gradually 'dropping' synth noises, drum machines and buried vocals, and the other 'song oriented' pieces (I guess) are kinda hazy on me right now. You're on your own there. Let's just say they're pretty much in the same vein as the others.
Some have complained that there are way too many instrumental or near-instrumental pieces on the album, but I think they really keep it from becoming too monotonous, and besides, they have good ideas and memorable grooves in their own right. I particularly find "Church" interesting, as it keeps repeating a sample that says 'church in hell...' over and over, adding repeating successions of sounds to it each runthrough, there's the very soundtrackish "Film" (how appropriate), "Dead Doll" makes effective use of neat key changing synth loops or something like that, and "Tomorrow" can also be added to the intriguing keyboard experiment pile. Very atmospheric. On the other hand, the closing track "The Centre Bullet" is over 9 minutes of ambience. It's definitely way too long, and tries my patience around the 5th or 6th minute or so, but at least it's very memorable, with its' repeating robotic 'centre bullet...' voice and calm keyboard groove. Anyway, a good beginning.
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(reviewed by Nick Karn)
This album, Skinny Puppy's last studio effort as a band, finds Nivek Ogre's vocals and lyrics apparently even more indecipherable than usual on account of their incredibly personal (and probably painful) tendencies. The songs are equally impenetrable themselves, as eerie synthesizers, warped and often random samples, loud as hell synthesized drums, and other freaky uses of studio technology that help create a terrifying, but completely disorganized and often overly chaotic, audio experience. As a result, I honestly don't know whether to call this a great 'horror movie' or just a horrifically executed project - I'd say it often falls somewhere in between.
"Knowhere?" is the most purely chaotic, out of control song here, as it sounds like there's about 10 different-sounding machines going off at once with the loud drums, brutal, furious screaming - the aural equivalent of 300 bricks being thrown at your head while you're in a house during a tornado with the stereo blasting, and it's somewhat effective. "Inquisition" has a pretty good catchy beat with cool sampling although pretty much all noise and almost no melody. "Love In Vein" and "The Killing Game" are more worthwhile as the first two tracks - the former pounds along and sounds more angry, convincing and intelligible than the others, and the latter is apparently the most known song here (released as a single) and it's very haunting with a dark synth and a slow beat with the haunting Ogre line, 'I taught the killing game first'. The other two tracks on the first half, "Mirror Saw" and "Scrapyard", are intense but thoroughly unremarkable.
The second half, however, is absolutely horrendous, highlighting all the weaknesses of the industrial genre's 'noise for noise sake' and soulless tendencies, with "Riverz End" being a boring and completely unlistenable instrumental 'song' (or more like useless sound collage with ambient synths in the background) and "Circustance" being the most violent one lyrically but has far too much irritating screaming and background chaos to be anything close to decent - the halfway catchy second instrumental "Lust Chance" has a nice techno beat, really haunting synths and samples and is actually decent, but still nothing spectacular.
The same can't be said for the atrocious beyond words closer "Download", which is probably the worst song in my entire collection, if it can even be considered one. It's pretty much 5 minutes worth of what sounds like someone fast forwarding through an unorganized sound collage with explosions in the background, and then a nearly 6 minute ending of nothing but reverb. Even the missing song 10, "Left Handshake" (which was deleted here for illegal sampling reasons), is superior even though it's not even there and I haven't heard it. Ugh!!!
Another thing that pisses me off about my copy of this one is that, due to a plant error, the first 40 seconds of opener "Love In Vein" were completely cut off, and the songs all start off 40 seconds too late on the track index. Rumor has it after "Left Handshake" was deleted the band did this so people wouldn't listen to separate tracks on their own and instead listen to the album in its' entirety - it's a VERY difficult task to do so, however, as it took me probably almost four months just to listen to it straight through three times so I could sort of make up my mind. And the final verdict, despite some creative moments, is pass.
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COMMENTS
[email protected] (Earl Jonathon Arnett)
I'll have to disagree with you on the "Download" song. It certainly comes off as a noisy mess if you're expecting a real song...but if you're in the right mood for it, it's superb.
(reviewed by Nick Karn)
The Process was Skinny Puppy's official swan song, and it's an inconceivable improvement over the totally lackluster and unlistenable last effort because it attempts to add melody, somewhat more intelligible lyrics and song structures, and guitars (which were used very sparingly on previous efforts), while still maintaining the horror movie intensity - this is definitely a psychotic collection of songs you'd never want to listen to in a million years in the dark. It's a fairly accessible release too, despite sounding impenetrable at first - after several listens, I've found every song here to be excellent or at least very good in my book, so it's a very consistent release with no weak songs other than the noisy minute long ending track "Cellar Heat", which is obvious filler and really isn't a song anyway.
"Jahya" is a brilliant terrifying introduction track to open the album, starting off with a quiet piano line and haunting backwards voices before it unpredictably explodes into a loud as hell guitar riff - the whole way it's structured is psychologically masterful. "Death" is actually a more straightforward riff-oriented track with industrialized beats and awesome Ogre lyrics, with a particular standout random-sounding 'house of cards dealing smack' section. "Candle" is another departure, actually using an acoustic guitar and a really catchy melody to go along with the typically dark lyrics, and "Hardset Head" hooked me in with its' aggressive riff, addictive beat and chorus ('silent noise...'). The dark and quite hopelessly beautiful ballad, "Cult" (another rarity for them), has a dramatic keyboard part that plays throughout the entire song and features a whole lot of vocal and lyrical emotion from Ogre - it's definitely my favorite track here. The title track closes the first side as the most inaccessible song here, but both the spoken word parts in the verses and moody synth section at the end make the song very worthwhile.
The second half opener "Curcible" is another psychological terror like "Jahya", with gentle piano over the opening lines, 'good... and evil... does not exist' and the unexpected yell of 'CHRIST!!!!!!!' immediately pushes the song in a louder, more frightening and intense direction, particularly in the drums department. The following song, "Blue Serge", uses the same repetitive dance beat over and over again, and I used to hate the song because of it, but the beat is very mesmerizing, the samples used here add a whole lot to the song and the ending fade out where it sounds like every instrument sounds like it's slowly 'dying' is awesome. "Morter" is another great danceable tune that manages to succeed on account of the eerie synth work and nice beats, while the closing piano-led "Amnesia" (not counting the filler "Cellar Heat") has a lot of drama and emotion and is pushed forward by a robotic voice of 'tear it down' in the chorus. It's another highlight on a damn consistent set of songs (yes, that's right - the term 'songs' is actually applicable to a Skinny Puppy album this time around!)
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