Skinny Puppy Biography
Industrial band Skinny Puppy, from Vancouver, Canada, are widely regarded as a forceful influence on the development of the genre in the late 80s, counting Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor among their loudest advocates. The principals behind the band are cEVIN Key (as this multi-instrumentalist prefers to call himself) and Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie), the band's singer and lyricist, who is not related to their producer, Dave Ogilvie (later a full-time member of the band). They met in 1983, and quickly discovered a mutual taste in esoteric film music. Skinny Puppy's first release was a cassette, Back And Forth, before the Remission EP, released on the Canadian label Nettwerk Records in 1984. This introduced their dark electronics, textured by synthesizers, samples and tape loops. It was followed by Bites, again reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire's early experimentation and aural shock tactics. A more homespun component was the strong dance rhythms and sequences, which, while stopping some way short of convention, helped make these recordings more accessible. It featured Wilhelm Schroeder as collaborator, with one track, "Assimilate', produced by Severed Heads" Tom Ellard.
Skinny Puppy's third album, 1987's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, continued previous threads but with superior production. It also introduced Dwayne Goettel (b. 1965, d. 23 August 1995) on keyboards and electronics, Schroeder's replacement, and formerly of another industrial unit named Psyche. His contribution to Cleanse Fold And Manipulate helped improve the band's aesthetic, though the appeal of the results was largely limited to an underground fanbase. The follow-up chose a slightly altered lyrical tack, with Ogre expanding on his environmental concerns ("Human Disease (S.K.U.M.M.)") and issue songs ("VX Gas Attack" marking a pre-Gulf War riposte to Saddam Hussein and Iraq). The anti-vivisection theme was also relocated to the stage, where Ogre would dramatize the roles of test animal, lab technician, and consumer. Al Jourgensen of Ministry joined for the sessions that produced Rabies, adding metallic guitar runs to help bring Skinny Puppy to the attention of other musical sub-genres. Too Dark Park refined previous lyrical concerns, to produce a set of bunker-mentality belligerence and stark minimalism. Last Rights was to have featured spoken extracts from the 60s LSD-celebrity Timothy Leary, but although he gave permission his management blocked their use at the last moment. Its substitution with 40 seconds of silence caused a major fault on several thousand copies. Members of Skinny Puppy were involved in a number of side projects. Key worked with former pen pal Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots as the more pop-orientated Tear Garden. Various members of Skinny Puppy, including long-standing collaborator Alan Nelson, also played with Hilt, whose debut album was released in 1989. In 1990, a compilation of 12-inch versions was released, including Adrian Sherwood's remix of "Addiction". Goettel died from a heroin overdose in August 1995. The band had recently completed an album for Rick Rubin's American Records, with the provisional title of The Process. Goettel had also formed a spin-off project with Key, Download (also the title of a song from Last Rights), and an EP was released, posthumously, on the German label Off Beat Records. In interviews to promote the new album at the beginning of 1996, the remaining members announced their decision not to continue with the band. Ogre and Key reunited in 2000 to begin recording new material. A number of archive releases preceded the ensuing studio album, The Greater Wrong Of The Right.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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