Skinny Puppy

People keep saying the Nettwerk reissues are garbage. Most notably that the sound is terrible, not sourced from the masters and that the "art work is muddy,.. like a bootleg" as Steven R. Gilmore said himself. But I'm not seeing any of that. I've compared my reissues to the art of the original pressings and it's nearly identical, if anything only a tad brighter on Rabies. As for the music itself, I do not own original vinyl of the albums, but I do have them on CD. Played through the same system they sound nearly indistinguishable, or better with an exception being Last Rights was quieter, but still sounded fantastic once the volume was adjusted.

Just my experience, but I find the reissues to be excellent and are great alternatives to spending hundreds on original pressings.
I'll end this with a quote from the back of the Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse jacket.

"For those who make up their own minds."

The Nettwerk Reissues are ridicolously awful, avoid them like the plague.
Youre better off paying alot for the originals, youre paying alot of money for a good sounding vinyl instead of a bit for a bad sounding vinyl.

SKINNY PUPPY's first show in San Francisco was at the Stone on Broadway; the opening act was SEVERED HEADS. Incredible night! Messy; bloody red corn-syrup everywhere, coming off Ogre; a girl licked my fingers.

The show was booked by Savoy Tivoli's Gerry Gerrard who managed VOICE FARM, AJAX, SRL, etc. and released MOEV's immortal "Rotting Geraniums" 12-inch. Gerry's then-wife Olga managed DIAMANDA GALAS (who was dating JELLO BIAFRA at the time)... Later in New York, at the Ritz, Olga's birthday party would feature SUICIDE (with The CARS' Ric Ocasek on guitar!) headlining over FRONTLINE ASSEMBLY, MEATBEAT MANIFESTO, AJAX. Ocasek's wife, supermodel Paulina was there, too!

The last time I saw Jerry, I was spinning vinyl at the Kennel Club (now known as the Independent?) on Divisadero; it might've been STEREOLAB's 1st show in SF; it was prior to their 1st Lollapalooza tour. Anyway... Jerry comes into the DJ booth, and so I ask him what's he doing there? He tells me he's managing NINE INCH NAILS, and Trent's in the audience! CYRNAI's eyes are wide, so I ask Jerry, can she (Cyrnai) meet Trent? He answers, "sure, let's go"...

But, rewind back a couple of years prior to all that... A local experimental band based out of 455 Tenth Street in the SOMA district (across the street from what was then an abandoned brewery, but now a huge Costco) self-described "experimental industrial" (Ex-I) aggregation called IAO CORE (described by the press as "baby Velvets" after opening for Karen Finley; the infamous "yams up my butt" performance) along with East Bay'ers GOAT GUYS FROM HELL, and ACL, were all performing together on the lawn at UC Berkeley.

Eventually resorting to simple initials, GGFH would soon sign a multiple albums deal with Peaceville UK based on recommendations from AUTOPSY/DEATH drummer Chris Reifert. Those albums by GLOBAL GENOCIDE FORGET HEAVEN would influence young UK and European extreme metal-heads that would later populate and release their own music during the peak of mid to late '90s black metal and deathgrind scene.

When MORBID ANGEL first played The Omni in Oakland (with NOCTURNUS, AUTOPSY, and VON opening? My memory is fuzzy; plus I got there late!), Trey was wearing his SKINNY PUPPY shirt onstage! Earlier that day, my roommate Brad (who worked for Combat-Relativity) drove the Morbid Angel guys around the Bay looking for LAIBACH records in all the record stores that were Brad's accounts. Lol

A founding member of IAO CORE, M.C. Schmidt would go on to form MATMOS, and work with BJORK on her albums.

Killer music band, especially till The Process who signed a turn in SP's sound. However, they've not sold their souls neither to marketting nor fashion devils alike Front Line Assembly. Even if I'm not so enthousiast about their latest releases because it's too clean and postproducted, I still believe they can be surprising. After all, Weapon and The Greater Wrong Of The Right albums have some cool moments. I'm just more fan of their original sound like a mix of cold wave, punk rock & EBM.
For me, "Too Dark Park" is their best album ever, followed closely by "Remission", "Bites", "Back And Forth Series 2" and "Last Rights". "Rabies" is also nice but comes a bit after.
Some of their titles are very experimental, like moody instrumentals with distorted vocal sounds, but add some welcomed chilling moments among the more radical and brutal tracks.
Their Art is obviously a social and political act, often displaying the worst and weakest in us. Watching them performing live scenic sessions is also memorable and probably more understandable than their complex lyrics, worth the experience at least once.

For some reason Skinny Puppy has a distinctive touch that no one ever did manage to copy or recreate. Its true that many bands got influenced by them but to this day theres no one comparable in terms of creativity. Their weird synthesis, their arrythmias, the mysterious, decadent and vicious atmospheres they imprinted in their tracks were and still are really special and unique. I remember the many dark images that this music projected in my mind, premonitions of a world sinking into pure darkness as product from implacable forces falling down upon it. Skinny Puppy created really obscure soundtracks for the industrial age, the post modern reality or whatever term you may want to use for describing the dystopia adjacent to "the future is now" commandandment from the civilized world.

Truly revolutionary in all sense of the word, chaotic and mesmerizing SP did not just paved the way for EBM but created a singular gap in which only its own presence its allowed, a perfect conjunction of darkness that resembles a disjointed and destructive world of fantasy which its own picture is our own world.