Skinny Puppy
The Process

THE REVIEW

Return to the ruins of a past never extinguished, I take in hand the usual poison, a radioactive mixture that stupefies the senses, intensifies inner pain, extinguishes hopes. A troubled passage of useless days, consumed in the anonymity of a suffering always present, insistent, devastating, corrosive.
The decline of the soul and the will to live marries well with this disc released way back in 1995, re-assembled with great mastery by the superb Rave, an electronic manipulator of undeniable technical talent. I return with an ancient disease that continues to plague and consume my agonizing days, lost in the darkness of a shapeless, insipid, bristly, and violent reality, fucking annoying and devoid of drops in tension.

The Process represents the last unhealthy cry of the puppy era, molded by the sick industrial/technological intuitions of the unruly genius that was Dwayne Goettel, a perfect adhesive between the meticulous technical skill of the multi-instrumentalist Cevin Key and the apocalyptic visions of the singer Nivek Ogre, pessimistic denunciations of a cruel reality that seem to want to decree the inevitable decline of the human race.
This album miraculously emerges from the ashes of a band now in disarray, undermined by internal incompatibilities and irremediably cut by Dwayne's death from overdose. The malnourished puppy once again loses itself in the dark lands of anguish, pervaded by an insistent scent of danger, desperately seeking a safe place to finally exhale its last breath in peace. Jahya is a trembling overlap of skinned, putrid, devastated bodies by deadly electric discharges, disorienting swaps of crazed electronic sounds, metal guitars in the foreground marking the evil sermon recited by an abominable voice that seems to come from the underworld. Classic start in pure Skinny Puppy style that seems to follow the usual coordinates of a disconcerting music without a clear logical thread, but this time the story is different, the songs are well defined, the result less daunting than expected. Death immediately reveals the new changes, Ogre's collaborations with Revolting Cocks and Ministry make themselves strongly felt, metal guitars that constantly pair with the martial rhythms of ebm, dark atmospheres from a post-apocalyptic scenario.

And here comes what you don't expect, Candle a sort of ballad for the survivors of the nuclear holocaust, for the first time in over ten years of activity you hear Nivek's voice clean, without distortion, melodic and almost intimate in the verses, exasperated in the choruses, supported at the beginning by acoustic guitar, funereal strings that then degenerate into the usual cyber techno delirium.
The whole work moves on these trajectories, a perfect synthesis of an astounding career, the final testament of one of the most influential electronic bands of the last twenty years.
In 2004, however, a return to the scene with the two survivors Nivek and Cevin for a decent, professional, accessible, danceable album, full of catchy tunes, a new guise in short that could also please those who do not love these horrific sounds, light years away from the incomparable bizarre creativity of previous works.