Skinny Puppy
Too Dark Park

THE REVIEW

A destabilizing nightmare of infected electronics, contaminated by sound perversions inclined to total nihilism, the wildest and most bizarre experiments that know no boundaries, but are constantly projected towards a raw, pessimistic, and sick vision of a reality represented as a terminally ill patient spending their last hours of life in anguish, delirium, spasms, and convulsions, a cry of alarm against the total indifference of people who do not notice the unhealthy sores that, like chasms, swallow the world day by day. (To remember with what tenacity Skinny Puppy has denounced over the years, with their musical proposal, a message in favor of anti-vivisection).

Pioneers of a music that came to be known in the first half of the 80s as ebm (Electronic Body Music), an often extreme and dark variant of the early techno-pop groups riding the high-chart waves, I'm referring to the whole New Romantic Wave of groups like Depeche Mode, Erasure, Ultravox, Human League, music created entirely with the help of analog Synths and Drum Machines, but decidedly with a melodic and danceable cut. In contrast, ebm was born by incorporating the first industrial experiments of the late '70s emanated by groups like Throbbing Gristle, the dark futuristic technological visions of Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide that well-matched the Cyber Punk science fiction literature in vogue at the time. Let's not forget Kraftwerk, the first to give a danceable rhythm to these orgies of plastic and cacophonous sounds, the Punk attitude hovering at the time, but above all the Dark aesthetics and decay, the true nerve center of the genre. The first were the Daf, but soon followed by Front 242 and many other important groups mainly European, but the sado-electric impulses of the new music also hit America and strangely that remote island bordering Canada, Vancouver. From this latter earthly location, in my modest opinion, comes the most seminal and interesting group of all, the most complex and sick, Skinny Puppy from which, it should be noted, another great group was born from the defection of a component that still today maintains the primacy of a flagship for the new electro/industrial generations, namely Front Line Assembly.

After this introductory phase and leaving aside the early part of the career still excellent from 1984 to 1989, it reaches a Masterpiece of absolute beauty, the pinnacle of Puppy, an abstract and dark work, innovative and unsettling, corrosive, glacial, seemingly illogical given the tension and atrocious morbidity, the plot twists of music that knows no verse/chorus form, but is free to derail at any moment towards unexpected and disorienting rhythms and litanies.

All this is "Too Dark Park" dated 1990, made even more unhealthy by the troubled drug experiences in which the trio had recently become entangled, the intro "Convulsion" speaks clearly the inner hell has opened the doors, experimentation is free to spread all the frustrations and cruel pain afflicting every man lost among the technological wrecks in an era that has lost color and feelings, a frantic chase of electronic effects, industrial noises, Metal guitars placed in an unusual way and context, but overall a mega filtered and malignant voice expressing all its hatred and despair, as if it were a tortured soul awakened after a state of catalepsy, buried alive and seeking help. The second track, "Tormentor" starts with a hyper-technological ride where the darkness adapts well to an apparent danceability corrupted by that damned ogre voice and constantly disturbed by hot fragments of insane Synth, B Movie voices cut and sewn perfectly to create a threatening chaos always on the verge of collapse and an outburst of anger. The following tracks further highlight the evil disease hovering over these grooves of perverse music, the tension does not yield to the frantic pace of the Drum Machine and the twilight, obsessive, unhealthy, desperate atmosphere envelops in a vicious circle that knows no glimmer of light, pessimism reigns supreme, death is there waiting.

No fear, so to speak, an apparent calm tinged with disarming melancholy arrives with "Nature’s Revenge", a sad and resigned reflection on the crime of being born into this world, with Nivek magnificent in interpreting with his tormented voice a thousand days spent in the utmost anguish and paranoia. And here we are at my favorite track, "Shore Lined Poison", a continuous cataclysm, a volcanic explosion where you don't know where the incandescent lapilli will land, constant rhythmic changes, pure malaise, chaos, disorder, destruction, resignation, regret, insane screams that don't know where to go anymore, where to find a safe refuge from a nuclear winter that leaves irremediably signs of chronic deformation. The only concession to a song with an almost human appearance is represented by Grave Wisdom, a fairly linear rhythm, albeit always an evil singing, but overall in favor of an almost danceable sound condition. To conclude (I think I'm done), I would mention after the electro/guitar hybrid "T.F.W.O.", the wonderful "Morpheus Laughing", Horror keyboards that would have suited well the famous Horror movie "Phenomena", anguish and hate seeping from the usual voice crucified in distortion, resigned to weeping, directly from a zombie claiming injustices suffered in life. Drum roll and industrial finale for a soundtrack with a horrendous alien Nivek Ogre wishing everyone a good night. A masterpiece regardless of the different musical tastes of each individual.