Mythmaker

Skinny Puppy
Mythmaker

I was never much of an industrial music fan. I had an appreciation for the way they tried to infuse techno and rock, but it never really peaked my interest. I remember the first time I was introduced to Skinny Puppy. I had a friend back in 1996 who was heavy into acid. And you can tell how much LSD this guy consumed in his teens due to his twitching and the flashbacks he got. It was a mess. He was a poster boy of why you should not try acid. Anyway, another thing I remember about him was that he had music a lot of people weren't familiar with. There was DJ Keoki and another band called Skinny Puppy that he always talked about. DJ Keoki I thought was ok, since he was more in the rave scene. Skinny Puppy I had a hard time getting into. Nothing against them personally, it just wasn't my thing. So, that's how I got introduced to them. Fast forward to now and I recently heard they put out a new album in 2007. Again, I wasn't that interested in checking it out, until I read a press release quote about the song "ugLi", by the singer Ogre:

The simultaneous percolating and grinding “ugLi” (with its refrain “Jesus wants to be ugly”), is not an attack on spirituality, but a treatise on how religion is used as a tool by the morally bankrupt as a means of control. “I wrote those lyrics over a year ago, because I felt that the concept of Jesus was being used in an ugly fashion,” says the singer. “Now, you’re seeing a large body of the Christian movement questioning that utopian union and questioning the morality of the current administration.”

There's a lot of truth in that quote. Since I related to what he said, I was now intrigued to hear the album. Soundwise, the music is what you would normally expect from an industrial album. Themes include questioning the current political administration, as well as dealing with issues of trust. Along with the mesasage in the song ugLi, the aggressive beats in it are probably the best on the album, making it the standout track for me. I'm still not much of industrial music fan, but I can appreciate the approach that was taken on this.