Skinny Puppy - Last Rights

I bought this album in one of its Capitol incarnations in the late 90s, so by then the track problems had been fixed, but I could imagine that was quite annoying. Technicalities away, this is definitely Skinny Puppy's opus. It is a good example of a well-rounded album in my book, one which, while having some stand-out tracks ("Killing Game," "Knowhere?," "Scrapyard"), does not interrupt the flow with singles-to-be. The band really explores extended ambience as well as the peak application of Key's live drumming and abrasive sampling. The album is like a stripping away of layers and layers of self and ruined emotion towards a spiritual preparation for death. Every track coheres into this theatre of the mind. That said, the album really does suffer from the lack of the original Track 10, Left HandShake. It was the most simulataneously mirror-stare meditative and medicatively gut-wrenchingly disorienting track on the album, a perfect climax before the stunning explosion into satori that is Download. However anyone who uses a computer who's acquired Track 10 knows how to arrange the album the way it was intended to be heard in the first place.

Through the first few listens, I was drawn to Scrapyard for some reason. I then gradually started to favor Love in vein and Killing game. Riverz end is a rehash of Rivers from Rabies. Inquisition is not too bad, but there are better singles out there. The song names are quite interesting in how they are spelled and utilize homonyms as well as synonyms.

Many of the initial released copies were defective. A second issue of 'Last Rights' was released with a sticker slapped on the cardboard box marked "quality controlled". The text on the cover art was also modified. The picture above shows the original cover.

I don't know whether it's the same on the Nettwerk release of 'Last Rights' or not, but the tracks on Capitol's release are cut incorrectly. excluding the first track, every other track starts at the last 30 seconds of the preceding track. Very annoying.
Also, here is a quote from lastsigh.com regarding track 10:
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The tenth track, which is missing from the track listing of Last Rights, was originally entitled "Left Handshake," and was a song featuring extensive samples of Timothy Leary. However, the owner of the source of the samples threatened Skinny Puppy with a law suit, if they used the samples in question. Not wishing to be involved in legal complications -- although Leary personally had given his permission for use of his words in the song -- Skinny Puppy decided to drop the song altogether. It has since appeared on the European release of Brap, as well as on a couple of bootlegs.
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