By Alicia Stillman.....
"I set my genius to portray the pleasures of cruelty."
(Skinny Puppy):~Industrial shock horror*Death metal*Synth noise terror*Theatrical performance art~
(Mandatory label application).
(Skinny Puppy singer Ogre's bible):
Lautreamont's Maldoror, the first piece of surrealist writing, full of images of torture and other forbidden horrors. Like the mad Frenchman "118" years before, Skinny Puppy have given rich expression to the ecstasy of pain, chaos, and mortal terror.
(May "1987"):
A Skinny Puppy press conference at Capital Records in New York City.
The room is full of reporters, photographers, and record company people jabbering away in excited anticipation. All this pretentious, drawn out babble gives me a headache, and my eyes are peeled for the nearest escape hatch. But with morbid thoughts of Skinny Puppy dancing in my head, paralysis sets in. "You're in for the long pull,"a voice from within tells me. I pause, and ponder, "Are these three Canadians anything more than posturing, vainglorious rock stars masquerading as artists?"I pray this is not so.
At long last Skinny Puppy file in; they look tired and ill at ease amidst the ravenous media weasels who pounce with murderous glee. Perhaps the Puppies are human after all. Ogre's arms are covered with cuts and bruises. He waits for the first question --"Do you consider yourself or your music abnormal?"-- The former magician dead pans, "Normality and abnormality are questionable things. Our music is quite different in that it takes certain elements from "normal" music, as well as the use of a lot of gruffness, and takes things the opposite way. As opposed to getting clean sounds, we get unclean sounds."
Kevin Cey (percussion/guitar) interjects that the reason he and Dwyane Goettel (synth) quit their respective bands to form Skinny Puppy, "We weren't getting any satisfaction out of the music until we misused the things we were trying so hard to keep clean,...keep nice all along." Keep "nice", indeed. Bless their black little hearts.
Ogre's speaking voice is low and well modulated, a far cry from its stage and vinyl manifestations. His interview mode is poised and polite; no trace of the maniacal stage and recording beast is in evidence. What then are the influences behind these drastic transformations?
Ogre: "My influences are everybody and everything. Walking down a New York City street, the sound of a can of baby food being opened and spooned into my mouth. Every bit of music has done its good and bad. As well, as lot of Skinny Puppy's music involves context -taking one voice out of a situation and placing it into another to change the meaning."
I ask what prompted him to get into music in the first place. Was it disturbance? Catharsis?
Ogre: "Well, if you can imagine three pillars of your life -family, a relationship, business. In 1982 they all crumbled for me and alii was left with was this big void. There was nothing I could go grab onto for a moment and say, 'Hold me; hold me for a second while I get this other thing together.' That's what it was for me, a real kind of therapy, and it always has been. When I go on stage it's a different persona, but it's a very real persona to me, and it's expelling things every night.
Skinny Puppy live (a literary parallel):
"a sharp burning sensation in the limbs, muscles twisted as if flayed, the sense of being made of glass and breakable, a fear, a recoiling of movement and noise..." "renunciation of this simple gesture, a staggering and central fatigue, a kind of gasping fatigue, movements must be recomposed, a sort of deathlike fatigue, a fatigue of the mind in carrying out the simplest muscular contraction, the gesture of grasping, of unconsciously clinging to some thing, must be sustained by a constant effort of the will..."
* A Description Of A Physical State by Antohin Artaud (1929)~The live show (a personal impression):
A wonderful, frightening illusion. A writhing, twisting mass of flesh in search of the ultimate sensation/release. Ogre tricks you by hiding his shadows well. Before you know it you're drawn in. Is this really happening? Red, red everywhere. No, this can't be real. Strange is the feeling of one's flesh crawling.
Skinny Puppy Cleanse, Fold, and Manipulate. The gods smiled upon the red night. My prayers have been answered.