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During the Bites
tour, a band called Water had played opening gigs for Skinny
Puppy, and Key and Ogre had befriended the band's keyboardist Dwayne
R. Goettel. When Wilhelm Schroeder left Skinny Puppy, Goettel
replaced him, although in the beginning he was credited only as 'guest musician' (Greene). |
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Like Ogre, Goettel had been an introvert since childhood, and became
involved in music early on, out of "...the frustration of not being able to
communicate with people face to face." He saved up $ 800 for his first small
keyboard, he received classical training on the piano, and before Skinny Puppy
and Water he was involved in an early incarnation of Psyche
(Traub). As a member of Skinny Puppy, he initially felt that he needed to
unlearn much of his formal training, in order to contribute to Key's and Ogre's
music. In truth, Goettel's influence added a whole new dimension to Skinny
Puppy. "I think the biggest growth came after Mind: The Perpetual
Intercourse," Ogre stated in an interview with Permission in
1996. |
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1986 saw the release of Mind: The Perpetual
Intercourse, and the accompanying single Dig It. Compared to Skinny
Puppy's first two releases, Mind is a more
intricately crafted album that draws upon a much richer palette of sound. There is an even
balance between rhythm and melody throughout, and the many media samples, as well as Ogre's |
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Levels of toxic waste
Disgrace
Intolerant
All that's been done
Built up for a future race
A race that's never won
("One Time One Place"/
Mind: T.P.I.)
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vocals, are more
smoothly incorporated into the sound tapestries, than on either Bites or Remission. The tracks
on Dig It likewise
display this new richness of sound, although they are more heavily percussion oriented,
and decidedly tailored for the dance floor. To support "Dig It," Skinny
Puppy shot their first true video. The clip is filmed in gritty black and white,
and establishes a nice paranoid horror atmosphere. |
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Key is seen in foggy
long shots, walking through a churchyard, a shovel dangling from his one hand, while Ogre
is depicted cooped up in a claustrophobic apartment, watching horror films on a 16mm
projector, while apparently undergoing some horrible breakdown or psychic transformation. |
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Contrary to the Bites
tour, the tour in support of Mind
went smoothly and without technical difficulties. Ogre stepped up the theatrical
aspect of the show in order "...to create confusion and lower [the] boundaries
between audience and band (Greene)." Additionally, the presence of Goettel
in the band gave Skinny Puppy the musical edge that they had not had with
Schroeder completing the line-up. The result was a higher level of spontaneity
and improvisation during the live performances. In recording successive albums, Key
and Goettel would use these improvisations as the point of departure for new
songs; "deep down Trauma Hounds" is only one example of a song that began as a
live improvisation (Calatus).
Before embarking on the production
of their next full-length album, Skinny Puppy released the EP Chainsaw, which
featured new mixes of songs |
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Make from steel
The ugly weapon
Killer instinct
From man to trigger
Peaceful time
Direct potential
Living through
One's own dementia
("Chainsaw"/Chainsaw)
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from both Bites and Mind, as well as the
outstanding title track, which foreshadowed the sound and thematic content of their next
album Cleanse Fold And
Manipulate.
Recorded in only three weeks, Key
has described Cleanse Fold And Manipulate as "...the
most rushed [Skinny Puppy] album (Brave New Waves)."
Surprisingly, it is also one of their most even and congruous releases. It was the last of
the band's |
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In vast space
All light displaced
We can kill desire
("First Aid"/Cleanse
Fold And Manipulate)
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Dear God
Whom we project
It's useless
Killing children
To satisfy
An arms budget
Who walks
Right or left
A child won't
Give a damn
("Second Tooth"/
Cleanse Fold
And Manipulate)
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albums to be recorded in Key's apartment, and it was the first to utilize MIDI
recording, rather than the standard analogue process of the time (Greene).
Cleanse Fold And Manipulate
marked the beginning of Ogre's concern with more universal issues. The vivid
imagery and personal content of his earlier lyrics is still intact, but on this, and the
following Skinny Puppy albums, he increasingly projected these onto the
face of more general issues. Musically, the album departed from Mind: The Perpetual
Intercourse by having a purposely grittier sound quality, with emphasis on noise
and decay, and an attempt to "...perfect the imperfections of samples," as Key
put it in a radio interview on Brave New Waves in 1988.
The album, along with the Addiction single
(featuring mixes by Adrian Sherwood), appeared in 1987, following which Skinny
Puppy promptly set out on their Ain't It Dead Yet? tour. The tour |
The message
Screams its purity
That those
With no rights
Display the right
To have no life
Do have respect
They must accept
A world
Committing Suicide
("deep down Trauma Hounds"/ Cleanse Fold And Manipulate)
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featured an even more
elaborate stage show than previously, with backing films and props galore. The band's
Toronto concert was caught on tape and released on video, and later CD.
In an interview with Greg Clow
in 1996, Key disclosed that "...the success of Skinny Puppy
was somewhat unexpected to its members." The band had made very limited use of the
conventional sales tactics of the music industry, such as music videos and extensive
promotional campaigns. In an earlier interview, Goettel had singled out these
very facts as Skinny Puppy's key to survival: "Skinny Puppy
keeps things within range as much as possible economically...videos are not a promotional
tool...touring, word of mouth and the albums themselves are (Day)." In any event, Skinny
Puppy had reached a level of success, where they were turning a real profit for
the first time.
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The success of Cleanse
Fold And Manipulate made it possible for Skinny Puppy to spend an
unprecedented five months on the production of their next album. At the time, Key
had moved to Toronto, and during the entire recording process, the band hardly ever saw
each other, yet, in various interviews, all three band members have described this time as
one of the happiest in the band's life. As had become Skinny Puppy's
standard work procedure, Key and Goettel would begin by writing
"...two albums worth of 'bed tracks,'" then the band members would each select
their favorites, which Key and Goettel would then complete the
composition of, before Ogre finally recorded his vocals on them at the end (Brave
New Waves). "Skinny Puppy gives energy through the power and
unpredictability of the outcome," Key commented in an interview in 1992
(Calatus). Indeed, from Goettel's and Key's various statements over the
years, it would seem that they never knew where Ogre would go with the songs, and
most of the time they had to press him to explain his often deeply personal and convoluted
lyrics to them.
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Green is the grass of survival
Feeding the cows
That they dine on
All is a disease
Human disease survival
("Human Disease S.K.U.M.M."/
VIVISect VI)
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Ogre had become aware of man's cruelty toward animals in his early teens (see Perry
Stern's article "Animal Rights Rule"), and for the writing of his lyrics to
Skinny Puppy's next album, he researched this issue extensively. The
results of his research were incorporated not only into the lyrics of VIVISect VI, but video
footage of animal testing, that he had come into the possession of, was also utilized in
the band's subsequent live shows, as well as in the video for Testure (Greene). In the
end, VIVISect VI
ended up being the most accessible of Skinny Puppy's albums. Ogre
commented that "...'Testure' was meant to be very accessible in order to have it
played on the radio and to put the message out (Stern 88)." And, it is a
statement that can probably be extended to include most of the songs on VIVISect VI. The
album, along with the singles Censor and Testure (the former
actually the track "Dogshit," which Nettwerk demanded Skinny
Puppy to change the title of for the single release), came out in late 1988. The
cryptic title was arrived at, by breaking down the word 'vivisection' into syllables, and
finding a "satanic" meaning hidden in the word (Stern 88).
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Skinny Puppy toured the American and European continents in support of VIVISect VI. Again, it
was a very successful tour, footage from the European leg of which can be viewed on the
multi media tracks of Brap.
The stage show featured the theatrics that had become the band's hallmark, culminating in Ogre's
onstage vivisection of a dummy retriever. After the band's show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key,
Ogre, and their tour manager were arrested and fined $ 200 for disorderly
conduct. Apparently an audience member had |
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mistaken Ogre's
vivisection as authentic, and called the police. "I find it paradoxical that the
police can justify arresting us on the assumption that we mutilate and experiment on lie
animals for a theatrical performance, when the inhuman reality is that it occurs in over
300 laboratories a day[,]" Ogre stated in court (Capitol's...).
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5 year genocide
1945
Suicide
Vivisect VI
("Testure"/VIVISect VI)
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< CHAPTER IV >
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