Almost 30 years and 15 albums now from Skinny Puppy and if you find yourself missing them for any amount of time there are always solo releases popping up from frontman Nivek Ogre under his ohGr moniker. ‘Weapon’ is the latest from him and collaborators cEvin Key and Mark Walk, as ever the trio have forged together an impressive armoury (see what I did there) of songs full of incredible sounds and synthesized effects. Listening to them on headphones will make you feel like you are in a different universe. Doing so walking down the street seriously is not advisable as the musical unbalancing aural attack is quite akin to having dropped acid and being flung into a cartoon. There is a message and a concept behind this album title and the songs within, one that shows that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ but one that equally highlights our worldly obsession with manufacturing a deadly arsenal of destruction, one which will no doubt eventually lead to out demise.
The futuristic spiky artwork works brilliantly with the music and really helps visually put it in perspective for me. One naturally wonders what stage show these loons might have in store for us and hope that it will hit our town. The music is as ever completely unique and intriguing as are the oddly as ever displayed titles. Starting with an insect like swarming sound mixed with straight up synth pop ‘wornin’ has the vocalist pretty much orating his parts in a dictatorial way that has a bit of a rap etched feel about them. It’s infectious as are the lyrics themselves. ‘illisiT’ raves it up a bit with some robotic sounding parts which remind of those doors on the Starship Enterprise opening and closing. It’s dance floor moving with a numbness about it as Ogre rasps out about it being a “criminal age” embedding the message in your head. Robotic and somewhat alien the music on the album as a whole sounds completely futuristic and it is at times like dipping into a bewildering sci-fi novel that was way ahead of its time. That’s not to say that these ten numbers are not highly accessible though and so they should be for anyone who has been listening to the band for as many years as they have been around. ‘salVo’ has a bit of an EBM feel to it and with yells of “screw it” bolstering it along it could well be a club hit for a disenfranchised generation.
Obviously each song here has its own distinct personality and with all the odd sound effects they move quickly on from each other all in a very compact time frame. The spring like sproing of ‘solvent’ sounds like early Human League and has a real futurist feel about it There is an experimental Krautrock feel about ‘paraGun’ along with high body popping sonic frequencies and the melodic groove swank swagger of ‘survivalisto’ is definitely a stand out number. Battle beyond the stars well that is ‘tsudanama’ for you as it fires out sonic pulses madly and even if it is a made up word it kind of fits! This is the longest track and probably the most in your face moment of the album making you feel completely and utterly under sonic attack.
This is not one of those albums that one would say if you have not heard the band before it is the perfect introduction, it’s not but then again none of their albums are, unless you have some sort of weird genetic wiring about you. I will say that it is another great release from our favourite weird Canadian’s and if you are a fan you certainly have to pick this up this Weapon, just don’t go pointing it at a Skinny Puppy!
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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