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CHAPTER
IV:
A Severe Case Of Rabies |
If I fade I may
And I want to fade away
All that I do is pray
That you will be there too
("Rodent"/Rabies)
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It would be impossible to write the
story of Skinny Puppy, especially the latter half of it, without
mentioning the drug use and inner turmoil that was an integral part of the band. In an
interview with High Times in 1993, Key claimed that "...every song
ever written, produced and performed by Skinny Puppy has been created
under the influence of THC." Dwayne Goettel, in the same interview,
disclosed that he had smoked pot since the age of thirteen, and, at the time of the
interview, would get high almost every day. Finally, admitting his heroin addiction, Ogre
said that he let himself become addicted, because he "...romanticized the idea of
being a drugged-out individual (Hendrix)." |
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"Even at the beginning the band was fueled by a lot of excess," Key
told Greg Clow in 1995, and went on to state that Skinny Puppy
almost functioned as a replacement for drugs to its members. The production of VIVISect VI may have
been the period, when the band was the most together, and Ogre the happiest.
However, it was also the time, when his drug use went out of control (Greene). |
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Around the same time Ogre became friends with Al
Jourgensen of Ministry, and began to plan various musical projects
with him. Key has expressed that he felt that Ogre deserted Skinny
Puppy in favor of Jourgensen, while Ogre, on the other hand,
felt outed by Key and Goettel, and therefore began working with Jourgensen
(Greene). In any event, it was decided to bring Al Jourgensen in for the
production of the next Skinny Puppy album. Goettel explained the
resulting album |
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Rabies, as
"...an experiment in what would happen if the sound of Skinny Puppy
and Ministry were crossed," but went on to say that the band had no
intention of subsequently following this path (Fox).
Rabies is without
question the most uneven of Skinny Puppy's albums, and it clearly
reflects the conflict between |
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Key/Goettel
and Ogre/Jourgensen, and the different musical directions these opposing
factions within the band aspired towards. Admitting the tension during the recording of Rabies, Jourgensen
commented in a phone interview in 1989 that he saw this as a positive aspect of the album,
because it is a "...mirror of what was going on." Unlike Jourgensen, Key
was indignant about the experience and outcome of the recording of Rabies. In later
interviews, Key has stated that the involvement of Jourgensen
"...mixed up the whole reason for Skinny Puppy's existence
(Calatus)." And, in a 1991 interview with Michael |
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Nigro, he expressed
that his interpretation of Jourgensen's motives for being involved in Rabies
"...[were] to break up the band." Key further commented that the
material for the album was written before Jourgensen entered the studio, and
while certain songs ("Fascist Jockitch" and "Tin Omen") were written
with him in mind, other songs were composed by Key and Goettel as
"pure Puppy" songs ("Rivers," "Worlock" and
"Choralone"). |
Way back in 68
Everything was so great
No way wrong date
Keep up the trade
Balanced charade
Close circuit truth
Used to remove
Keep the camera alive
("Tin Omen"/Rabies)
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Keep your eyes open
Soft spoken changes
Nothing
A view so cruel
("Worlock"/Rabies)
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After the completion of Rabies,
which was released at the end of 1989 along with two singles -- Tin Omen and Worlock, Ogre decided
to join Jourgensen on tour with Ministry. Key was
outraged, "I feel a little bit like a wife who's been cheated on[,]" he
commented in an interview with Kim Traub. However, on a more conciliatory note in
1991, he made the following |
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statement: "Yeah, I was
pissed off. But I understand why Ogre was doing it. We had been doing Skinny
Puppy for eight years and we needed a break (Nigro)."
In Ogre's absence, Key
and Goettel completed and released a series of side projects (Doubting
Thomas, Tear Garden, Cyberaktif and Hilt),
which both of them have expressed immense satisfaction and happiness with. Meanwhile, Ogre
was becoming increasingly addicted to heroin, and finally decided to decline offers by Jourgensen
to go on tour with Revolting Cocks, and become a steady member of Ministry,
because he knew that it would have pushed him completely over the edge with his drug use
(Nigro).
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Following the ordeal of Rabies,
none of the band's members had truly expected to ever record another Skinny Puppy
album again. However, producer David Ogilvie managed to reassemble the band, and,
acting as much as the band's therapist as their producer, recorded Too Dark Park.
More than ever, Key, Goettel and Ogre worked separately on |
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I burn inside
How to get out of here
How do you get out of this
Nature's revenge
Nature's cage
("Nature's Revenge"/
Too Dark Park)
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the songs, but the outcome was
a very strong album that displayed many new ideas on all the members' parts. In an
interview in 1992, Key explained the reunion of the band: "There has always
been a need to do Puppy, despite of how well we got along
(Calatus)."
Ogre's theme for Too Dark Park
was pollution, and lyrically it is a very despairing look at the world. After completing
his vocal recordings, he concentrated on creating a very ambitious background video
collage of clips from hundreds of horror movies, news broadcasts and other media sources,
to be used for the Too
Dark Park tour. |
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Meanwhile, Key
and Goettel worked on completing the album, and writing additional parts, in
order for them to be able to improvise live, and thereby perform the songs differently
each night. This aspect of Skinny Puppy's live shows was documented on
the track "Walking On Ice" on the Spasmolytic
single.
In two different interviews
conducted during the production of Too Dark Park, Key
commented on his and Goettel's musical aspirations, and approach to composing, at
this time. "Usually I start off with a sound that exists in the world already,"
he told Michael Nigro, "...like a sound from the radio. I'll flip through
the dial, hit the sample button, and I'll get this sound....This isn't the how I do every
song, but it's a typical example of how I like to work...So it's not so much [that] I'm
creating the songs as I'm helping them come to life." On a separate occasion, Key
reflected on |
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Waste the given gift
The natural cure
In the age of reason
Gone bad
("Shore Lined Poison"/
Too Dark Park)
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Skinny Puppy's
approach to technology, and explained it as a challenge of "...[h]ow can we misuse
[the technology], to get a sound that we want to get" (Convulsion).
Too Dark Park
and the single Tormentor
were released at the fall of 1990, and following the band's tour in support of the album,
an additional single -- Spasmolytic
-- was released, featuring bonus tracks of live material from the tour.
The live show for Too Dark Park
took Skinny Puppy's concept of incorporating theatrics and props to a new
level. From beginning to end, the show was supported by Ogre's video film, which |
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ended in an
extensive montage of suicides. The footage and overall impact of the show, had a
paralyzing effect on many audience members, and in some cities "Skinny Puppy
[was] threatened with jail for showing their backing films (Convulsion)."
Ogre had recorded vocals
for a couple of Martin Atkins' Pigface albums, and in 1991
accepted to go on tour with Atkins and Pigface. During his stay
in Chicago before the tour, Ogre came very close to being arrested while
attempting to purchase heroin. In an interview with Michael Nigro, Ogre
cited this experience as the point where he realized how close he had come to ruining his
career through drug use. On tour with Pigface Ogre made an
effort to clean up (Webb).
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Such a poor existence
In this third world
Resistance should be used
Civil disobedience
("Morpheus Laughing"/
Too Dark Park)
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Ogre's effort to clean up notwithstanding, he was going through a final violent
period of drug abuse, when Skinny Puppy reconvened in 1992 to record Last Rights. Key
has said that "Last
Rights really was our last rites. Ogre was almost incoherent at times. He
went out of control, and we went out of control trying to work with him (Greene)." As
a consequence, Last
Rights is the band's most experimental and disconcerting album. "I was
definitely in a position where I just didn't want to write anything other than the things
that really made me go nuts. Things that made me feel like my insides were twisting
apart....On Last
Rights, Skinny Puppy was definitely full of anger and I think it
all came out [,]" said Key of the music on Last Rights(DeBonis).
For Ogre, too, Last Rights was
a way of exorcising his personal demons. He has on separate occasions referred to the
album as his Season In Hell (after Arthur Rimbaud's collection of poems),
and as a 'document delusion' of his personal experiences (Bonner). The lyrics he wrote for
the album were apparently so personal that he |
Fallen angel head
Crashes dead
Out of control
Lost memories
Staircase twists
Darker rooms lit
With left out toys
After playing men
Changes toys into tools
Twisted playthings
On the staircase
Fools whose weapons
Represents
The killing game
("The Killing Game"/
Last Rights)
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decided not to
have them reproduced on the cover. In an interview from 1996, he reflected upon Last Rights:
"I knew it was the last Skinny Puppy album for me,...I think it's
the most beautiful and most painful record we ever made. With hindsight I can see it
carries all the battles of three people fighting over where it's going, it proves to me --
in a very untimely way -- that there is a lot of human feeling in electronic music
(Stern)."
Following past procedure, Key
and Goettel recorded their material first, whereafter Ogre went into the
studio with David Ogilvie to record his vocals. According to Key, every
song was written live in the studio, and every song was used on the album. Ogre
only recorded vocals for half the tracks, and apparently these, too, were mostly
improvised, and then rearranged by David Ogilvie to flow with the musical
compositions (Calatus).
Last Rights and
the single Inquisition
were released in 1992, and the same year Skinny |
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Too young too grow old
Addicted romance
Love tested
Ailing from
substance abuse
("Inquisition"/
Last Rights)
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Puppy went on
a tour of both Europe and the North American continent. The stage show was again dominated
by video montages projected on a big videoscreen behind the band, and Ogre
performing in huge, monstrous body suits during part of the show. "I act out the
creation of a monster that is your nemesis but is actually yourself. We use the idea of
being a puppet, a slave to different belief systems, and |
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how you can be manipulated by
people, if they know your weaknesses[,]" Ogre explained in one interview
(Bonner). The stage show featured a more hopeful ending than that of Too Dark Park,
but was naturally convoluted and abstract, rooted as it was in Ogre's personal
experiences. In answer to the question of the show being over the heads of the audiences, Key
replied: "Well, they've been exposed to the Videodrome signal (Calatus)."
Key, himself, largely functioned exclusively as drummer on the tour, but with
pedals to trigger and sample from a series of car stereos. Likewise, Goettel's
equipment was set up to sample randomly from the soundtrack of the video-tour-film
(Calatus). |
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In an interview following the completion of Last Rights, Ogre
voiced his positive feelings in relation to the album and upcoming tour, and negated the
rumors that this was necessarily Skinny Puppy's final release -- which
many people inferred from its title (Traub). The tour went smoothly and with great success
up until the middle of the European segment, when Ogre contracted Hepatitis A, as
a result of his drug use, and was incapable of completing the tour (Scudeler).
In the wake of Last Rights, a
second edition of Skinny Puppy's first tape Back & Forth
was released with 8 new tracks, in order to deter bootleggers from releasing further
copies of the original tape.
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River of track mark
Volcano upon arm
Open sores
Allowing ants to crawl in
And I wonder
If I missed the warning
("Love In Vein"/
Last Rights)
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< CHAPTER V > |
