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Up until a couple of months ago I had never heard of Skinny Puppy but Sam educated me, which is pretty funny. He knows more about 80’s bands than I do. So, who is Skinny Puppy?
Well, Skinny Puppy formed in the early 80’s in Vancouver, BC. We’ll call them industrial rock or electro-industrial. Thing is, that really wasn’t a thing until Skinny Puppy. They had a pioneering sound and bands like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson acknowledge Skinny Puppy influenced their music but unlike those bands Skinny Puppy never achieved the same level of commercial success. This is probably because they were actively crusading against things like animal cruelty and chemical warfare, which if you think about it probably have crossed lines in the most disturbing ways, and their live shows and music videos highlighted this abuse. Both the shows and their videos were extraordinarily graphic and got them banned from any widespread media coverage. You could argue other bands were just as graphic but it feels like a band that’s doing it for a cause and to make a point gets blacklisted while bands who do it only as “entertainment” can get away with anything. That’s just how I read it…
Fast forward to now. The band is now *ahem* older by 40 years and so they have finally decided enough is enough. The Seattle concert was the last show on their final tour. Over the years they’ve toned down the theatrics quite a bit but it was still a visually interesting show. The lead singer, Nivek Ogre, began the show dressed in a shrouded robe and then a couple of songs in took the shroud off to reveal himself as the typical looking alien lifeform, complete with glowing eyes. The makeup was movie level quality and I have no idea how he makes it through a show without passing out. Sam and I think he had a fan in the back of the mask but even if he did it still had to be hot. Throughout the rest of the concert he was followed around by an “aggressor” who carried various means of “torture and experimentation”, a glowing stick that was supposed to represent a cattle prod for example. This culminated in the alien finally being experimented on and his brain removed, almost certainly in the name of science. The surgery took place behind a curtain where all you could see were shadows. Later, when the aggressor prodded the brain it would impact Ogre, as if the brain was still part of his consciousness even though outside his body. It sounds odd but actually made sense in the scheme of things. 30 years ago they probably would have had fake blood spurting everywhere but now it was confetti. Welcome to the modern world.
At the end of the concert Ogre and the rest of the band came on stage and talked for a bit and it was surprising (to me) how emotional they were about this last show, the level of gratitude they had for the crowd, the members of the crew who had worked the show, and their 40 year career in general. You see the wild makeup and hear the music and think the band are truly rebels and then they have a conversation and genuinely come across as the nicest people, which of course they are, they’re Canadians after all!
Opening was a duo called Lead Into Gold. Their music was similar in style to Skinny Puppy. I enjoyed it but what I’ll remember about their music is the overwhelming bass, and I don’t mean thumping bass like you here coming down the street from a mile away. This was more of a constant tone that shook the whole venue. Yeah, it was loud, but it was really more about how it vibrated everything in you. Sounds funny to say but it kept tickling my nose. An experience, to be sure. Lots of fun.
[…] primarily what he’s known for and perhaps unsurprisingly, given that there was the final Skinny Puppy show the week before, there were quite a few Skinny Puppy t-shirts in the […]