Skinny Puppy – Mythmaker Review, and perspective on their rebirth.


Website: Skinny Puppy

Following up their 2004 “comeback” album The Greater Wrong of the Right, cEvin and Ogre (once again with the help of Mark Walk) present Skinny Puppy’s Mythmaker, due out January 30 on the SPV label. First, a track by track commentary:

“magnifishit” – Reminds me a bit of the OhGr stuff, though (as mentioned above) the orchestral-like bits wouldn’t be on there. As accessible as it is (for SP, anyway) it still has a bit of the SP dissonance. Not quite signature, but for reasons I’ll get into after the individual track dissection.

“daL” – Yes, those are samples you hear, alongside dark bass synths and hip-hop reminiscent beats… this is Puppy, not OhGr. This album is a painting, and we get to watch the process of smearing mud and vomit and feces all over it. There’s a hint of Key’s Download soundscaping going on, which begins to come out more as the album progresses.

“haZe” – Sort of a Download-meets-OhGr on this one, with more symphonic elements. I pick up a bit of musical reference to The Process in the key work and the lower-pitched vocal layering (also used on Last Rights and Rabies similarly).

“pedafly” – This starts with some creepy and fragile melody lines, contrasted with four-on-the-floor beats, then all of a sudden it’s a psyche-out and goes into something way different. Huge-ass drums, big apocalyptic anthem guitars, and machine-gun Ogre lyrics dominate here. This track is a marching army with air raid sirens. Mix Too Dark Park/LR with The Process to get a vague reference. And yes, more sampling.

“jaHer” – This track surprised me. Reminds me of “Candle” from The Process, but better, in that the song carries the established mood more fluidly. Acoustic guitars and piano with downtempo-ish beats kept moving by a persistent bass line, with a bit of Doubting Thomas feel here as well. If there’s a single, I think it should be this one.

“politikiL” – This is dirty as hell and very groovy. Proper SP dance material, and KMFDM (or Front Line Assembly) should be ashamed of themselves if they heard this track. The chopped-to-hell guitars riff all over; and what the hell is Ogre’s vocals doing there after a while, imploding on itself?

“lestiduZ” – Reminds me of the Descent II pieces Ogre and Mark Walk did (track names “Gluk” and “Ratzez”, notice the similarity in phonetic usage), or one of those tracks that shows up on the Brap outtake releases. Too dark/weird for OhGr, and there is a touch of later Download on this (particularly the album Effector). This is breakcore/noise, yes, so in a strange way, this fits what SP would do.

“pasturN” – Wait for it… yes, the key sound used on “Testure” appear here. Almost fits with the TGWotR material, though there’s various sprinklings of the Mythmaker production values. The track feels somewhat disjointed, however, stuck on a ‘verse-chorus-verse’ pattern.

“ambiantz” – Another Descent II-like track. Or it could be a good OhGr track, unlike most of the other OhGr tracks. (Don’t get me wrong, I like the albums, just there were only a select few songs that I thought stood out, more so on Welt than SunnyPsyop. Anyway…)

“ugLi” – More breakcore/noise here, with the mantra “Jesus wants to be ugly” beat over your head. Fits as the ending like “DaddyuWarbash” did on TGWotR. It’s evil, in that “I didn’t realize it” sort of way, and not until second or third listen does it come to you. And it trails off in an unmanned ship sort of way, as it should.

What I really appreciated about Mythmaker is the texturing, return of samples, gorgeous melodies and overall having a more aggressive yet beautiful flow.

The things that bother me about this album are few, one of which are the cymbals, they sound either overused or canned. With the new equipment they are working with one would think that they could have found something that worked better. The overuse of vocoded vocals starts to wear thin early on. I also miss the instrumentals, and since the return of SP they’ve been absent.

But, bottom line, better album than TGWotR, though still rediscovering themselves.

And now, a monologue:

Now, I know fans have been bitching about TGWotR, saying it doesn’t sound like SP, but more like an OhGr album. And I took a quick look, and that’s what it looks like they are saying about Mythmaker.

I think this is silly.

Yes, they sound different than Rabies or VIVIsectVI or Bites (no, really?), but keep in mind when those albums were made, and what equipment they were using. At the time they were pioneering the things that electronic bands use today. They were recording analog all the way into 1996. There’s a way different feel in analog than digital. Industry standards have changed since then in regards to recording. Also, it had been nearly ten years since cEvin and Ogre last worked together, and on their separate paths they grew as artists. So yeah, it’s going to be different. Even if they had stayed together, they would have changed over the years as they discovered and tried new things. Look at Nine Inch Nails. Go and compare Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, and The Downward Spiral back to back sometime. What’s that? Holy apocalyptic mood swings, Batman, you’re right, the albums sound way different from each other! And that was over a course of five or six years.

As for the argument that they aren’t SP without Dwayne (who died during The Process recordings), well, this happens to bands all the time. Joy Division/New Order is a great example (though they did change their name). Pink Floyd is another (though no member died at the time of the “loss”, it happened to them twice). I’m sure I could round up other bands on this point. I think it’s a blessing that these two guys (who started it in the first place) are working together again. Some say, then, that they shouldn’t use the name “Skinny Puppy” (alongside the above argument). Yes, it’s name recognition. They put nearly fifteen years of work into the band, and circumstances snuffed it. Now they have a chance to rekindle the flame and regain the success they had been striving for. ANY working band is looking for SOME level of success, no matter how much of an artiste they make themselves out to be, and to go by some other name would mean it would be more or less ignored. There’s a great quote from Ogre that I think explains it well. It’s from craveonline.com, and the question asked was “how do you think Skinny Puppy would do starting out now?”

I honestly think that if Skinny Puppy started at this point in time, we probably wouldn’t exist for very long. That’s the one thing, just realize, you have all these toys, but the things you love you should support. We’re lucky; we have a brand. We have something that’s survived, and we have kind of a multi-generational thing that we’re really both proud of and wary of. At times I see it as a curse, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. We’re so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a s—load of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn’t really happen in a lot of cases. And kids should realize that now, for a lot of bands, even though there’s MySpace and all these things, there’s such a glut of it that it’s hard for a lot of people to make it, to get themselves heard and continue on with their own heartfelt desire to make music. There’s just not that artist development going on where people can take chances anymore, and that’s sometimes where the real gems in music come from.

So, it’s Skinny Puppy to me. Different, but I recognize all the elements that make it theirs. I think some people are just hung up on that one album or that one song that they love and think they want more just like it. But if they took a moment to think about it, they’d realize that if they were given another “Worlock” or “Deep Down Trauma Hounds” all they’d say is ‘this sounds just like the last one, they’re just repeating themselves and are out of ideas.’ And something a lot of SP fans love is that each album is different, a goal recording artists should strive for.