I wanted to review this ten-year-anniversary reissue of Skinny Puppy’s comeback album
partly because I remember such ambivalence about their 2004 return at the time. First, being so
excited about any new activity, having only discovered the band’s trippy, dark industrial dystopia
after their apparently terminal demise; and then subsequently being pretty disappointed on hearing
this album (and barely listening to it since). Then, I was skeptical about the band’s world tour,
but dutifully bought a ticket to their show at the London Astoria even though I kind of expected
something horrible, and was blown away by a spectacular expedition through the dark alleyways
and subterranean tunnels of the band’s back catalogue, with the new album (in my experience at
least) scarcely referenced. So it seemed that for me, Skinny Puppy were always best listened to
somehow from a distance, years after the fact: time to revisit The Greater Wrong of the Right.
At an appropriate volume, the opening of first track ‘I’mmortal’ is pleasingly disorienting in
familiar style, with hissing static building and giving way to a jerky rhythm, the threat of convulsion and
collapse balanced with steely, undead compulsion. As the track develops, it becomes clear that the
2004 reanimation has Skinny Puppy, as before, grafting electronic dance beats with gothic synth
swirls and industrial menace, though here assimilating an updated drum’n’bass sound, in a similar
vein to Pitchshifter’s attempts at enlivening distorted metal guitar sound with urban dance rhythms.
The vocals, treated but clearly audible in the repeated chorus line “just looking for something” are
quite a leap from Ogre’s earlier unhinged barking. Though the electronic modification of the voice
itself fits just as well with the sonic post-industrial, cyborg dystopia, it has the effect of making
the lyrics - gasp! - easy to follow. There are even some complete sentences!
‘Pro-Test’ has the familiar big, big drums, stabs of guitar distortion and floating, ominous synths which jolt
into freefall before being recombined into the industrial dance beat, but again the voice jars with what
otherwise seems like development from earlier Skinny Puppy. This time Ogre’s vocal delivery is all
streamlined wordplay flowing more like toasting or rapping than his earlier deliberately abrupt snarl. On
‘Goneja’, the same flowing lyrical delivery appears as on ‘Pro-Test,’ after a classic Skinny Puppy sci-fi synth
intro breaking into an all-over-the-place beat created by electronic samples, keyboards and treated
percussion. But while I specifically remember being turned off ten years ago by a cheesy rapid-fire and
repetitive chat, listening again reveals a catchy rhythm and melody that seemingly embedded themselves
like a parasite years ago and lay dormant, ready to be reactivated.
However, for most of the record I find the vocals grate and obstruct full enjoyment of the sounds. While I
admittedly prefer the earlier style, the issue is not so much the phrasing or accent of the voice itself, but the
fact that the vocal line then has the responsibility of leading in a much more conventional pop-song style,
rather than being left submerged in the background to shriek of poisoned and perverted nature from an
iron cage of neglect and abuse. In ‘Use Less’ the message has already been hammered home in the title of
‘Use Less’, even before the lyrical lecture begins, 18 seconds into the song. Far more interesting are the
vocals that take a slightly more restrained role, such as later in the same song when a shouting but struggling
voice strains to be heard over a massed but still somehow indistinct chorus, or in the evocative last parts
of ‘Past Present,’ where cyborg wails mesh with the synths and relentless beats to occupy an uncanny space
between the severe industrial austerity and the trippy, hedonist abandon of a
psytrance rave.
Skinny Puppy’s signature style was always an experimental melange of heavily-processed
and enormous-sounding drums, unnerving and disconnected samples from horror movies, opulent
synth melodies and barked vocals. It seems unfair to criticise such an innovative and wildly creative
band for changing style, experimenting and updating their references, particularly given the
necessity of personnel changes since the tragic death of Dwayne Goettel in 1995. But translated
from the 80s and early 90s to the early 21st should sound exactly like that again, or if they should be
fiddling with the latest in studio gadgetry and sounds from more contemporary musical styles. ‘Ghostaman’,
for example, has a familiar soundscapey introduction, but the beat which enters feels rushed, perhaps
anxious to fit in with more modern dance culture, rather than continuing the unhurried, almost stately yet
relentless drill rhythms married with ethereal synth cycles which made Skinny Puppy tracks from
‘Smothered Hope’ (1982) through ‘Deep Down Trauma Hounds’ (1987) and all the way to ‘Inquisition’ (1992)
so darkly compelling and also so danceable.
The dynamics of The Greater Wrong of the Right in comparison to these previous excursions
seem a little flat, and despite the more atmospheric start to ‘Neuwerld’ there’s not much variation in
the tempo. This might in part be down to the production, or a desire to fit in as many bits and pieces
as possible, rather than create a dense and threatening but still varied atmosphere haunted by
keyboard melodies. It might be that there was a little too much concern over the album being ready
for what was a rabidly anticipated return amongst the diehard fans at least, and this resulted in a
slightly too polished, too finished result. But there are still irrepressible glimpses of Skinny Puppy’s
incredible gift for evoking mutated, radioactive, weird worlds: the best moments in each track are
all subtle bits at the edges, halfway-point interludes or the dying echoes at the end of a song, when
the heavy percussion machines breakdown to allow climbing and humming synths to emerge like
strange weeds with delicate flowers recolonizing the cracks between the concrete. Listening to a
reissued comeback album in retrospect, especially after that comeback became an ongoing project,
was always going to highlight continuities and differences with the unique legacy of 80s/90s Skinny
Puppy. The band themselves have recently played with this myth-remaking, by including a new
version of 1982 song ‘Solvent’ on their 2013 album Weapon, for example. I enjoyed revisiting The
Greater Wrong of the Right: maybe I’ll listen to the rest of the new record as well, in ten years or so.
A chapter I wrote about Skinny Puppy’s earlier recordings, ‘“A Spectre So Violent: Monstrous Logic
and the Malevolent City in the Music of Skinny Puppy” will appear in the forthcoming book Urban
Monstrosities, edited by Alexandra McGhee and Joseph Lamperez (Cambridge Scholars Press).
