In an era where the music industry is spitting out one cloned sound after another, real music enthusiasts have been clamoring for the days when originators ruled the clubs and the airwaves. And now, as if there has been some type of psychic email blast, they are answering our pleas and returning to the stage and the studios.
Skinny Puppy is right at the top of the glory heap, having pioneered the industrial electro sounds of the mid to late ’80s. This week’s sold out show proves that twenty years later, fan’s hearts still beat faster at the prospect of being able to relive those days.
But rehashing old material was not in cards for this new release, the first since The Process in 1996. Bringing in the immense talents from the Tool box, including Danny Carey’s acoustic drums on “Use Less” and the production skills of Ken Marshall, which are just a few of the hidden gems found in The Greater… One can expect the 12″ singles of “I’mmortal” and “EmpTe” are burning up the turntables at industrial club nights like San Francisco’s infamous Bondage A Go-Go, and with swirling synthesized laser rhythms, “Pro-Test” catapults you into another dimension, topped off with their trademark political raps and lyrical rants (and the irony of where we are now compared to the ’80s, they still have plenty of material to work from). And with the eerie effects of a spacetime continuum, “d0wnsizer” “what a whip lashed hate filled culture of/viruses born raised and infected with violent thought…defend the wrong, incite the thing to bring it down/to bring it down/to bring it down” which sinks slowly down into a deep, dark, and irresistible black hole of sound.
Except for those that follow the electro, EBM, and industrial genres, some music fans and music critics alike may believe that this world has come close to extinction. Not so. It did lose a step for a time in the late ’90s and suffered the redundancy other music styles have experienced. Maybe with a piece of work such as The Greater Wrong of the Right, whose overall theme speaks volumes and pumps with luscious and seductive pulsations, Skinny Puppy will spark interest in other bands that followed after these pioneers, including Informatik, Hate Dept., Project Pitchfork, another group who performs this week, Sister Machine Gun.
Synthetic Symphony
