Sic 'em

Skinny Puppy's back with that old bark and some new tricks.

by Sean O'Neal

Troubled times? We live under the Patriot Act and polluted skies. There's mercury in our drinking water. Terrorists are declaring war on terrorists. A war-happy captain is at the wheel.

We need Skinny Puppy.

Luckily for us, the '80s-born Canadian industrial band is back and still raging with razor-sharp anger, paranoia and punked-out hysteria.

In the band's heyday, singer Nivek Ogre's conspiracy-theory lyrics — kindled by gloomy predictions about ecological disaster and mind control — shred mercilessly through distorted vocoders while Cevin Key and Dwayne Goettel crafted dense electronic soundscapes and dance beats.

It's been a long road for Skinny Puppy, whose first album was 1984's Back and Forth and whose most recent studio album, 1996's The Process, was pieced together by Key and producer Dave Ogilvie after Ogre quit the band and Goettel died of a heroin overdose. The guitar-driven jumble was merely a respectable jerry-rig and a sour note to end on.

From there, Ogre allied with Pigface, KMFDM and Rx, while Key pursued a solo career and other projects like the Download, Plateaux and The Tear Garden. The two hardly spoke for the next few years, though both lived in Los Angeles. Still, proximity meant they'd cross paths on occasion. And when they did, Key would tell Ogre about these wacky calls he was receiving from promoters.

"You can blame these two German guys for the Skinny Puppy reunion," remembers Key. "After the band broke up, they kept on calling me and making me offers for several years. I sort of laughed at them and thought they were crazy. So Ogre said, "You should tell them that if they pay for the entire production and give us x amount of dollars, then we'll do it.' I did that, and they didn't hesitate, quickly replying, "OK, we'll do it.'"

In August of 2000, Ogre and Key played a set of Skinny Puppy classics for an arena-capacity crowd at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany. Around 10,000 tickets were sold and people showed up from six continents.

"Afterwards," Key recalls, "we were thinking that it's sort of a shame to put all the energy into just one event — especially in East Germany, where many people couldn't get a chance to see that. And for Ogre and me, it was seemingly a lifesaving event when we got together and found ourselves once again." So Skinny Puppy was back.

Their new album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (SPV), smartly incorporates additional players like Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X. As expected, the 10-track gloom-ride drives vigorously and furiously through distorted guitars, melodramatic synthesizers and Ogre's powerful lyrics. But this time around, the sound is more polished, refined, somewhat experimental and arranged with a sophisticated pop sensibility. There's even an IDM flavor with spliced and diced beats and vocals, recalling Aphex Twin.

"As soon as we started working, we started to get this mutual energy off of the results," Key offers. "We started to feel like we were teaming up and hearing something that we haven't heard in years. So, of course, it was spurring us on to get deeper involved. We inspire each other to do what we do, and the results are totally unpredictable. And that's what keeps up going."

Key and Ogre — backed by guitarist-bassist William Morrison and drummer Justin Bennett of Professional Murder Music and Thrill Kill Kult — have hit the road. Their performances remain an acidic megashow that bombards the senses with sound/visual interaction. They are not weighed down by an obligation to live up to the band's history.

"One thing that's always been fun about Skinny Puppy is that there's never really been any pressure to be a certain style or type of music," says Key. "In this day and age, it's a lot easier for us to be ourselves — let the music flow and not think about anything."

Wed., June 23, 8 p.m., $26 (in advance), with Tweaker, Electric Factory, Seventh and Willow sts., 215-336-2000.