Skinny Puppy - “Killing Game”
Last Rights, 1992
(Guest Editor - Geoff Garlock)
Who here likes Skinny Puppy? Oh wait a second. Am I the only one? Yeah well I’m used to that. So here is a video from the last Skinny Puppy record I truly loved “Last Rights”. This one is for the song “The Killing Game”, one of the best songs of the record. I LOVED Skinny Puppy. Well I still love Skinny Puppy. When I was just getting out of Junior High and just starting high school I was really starting to get into industrial music. Didn’t really have any interest in actually being an “industrial kid”. Didn’t really want to wear giant creeper boots and bondage gear and make my hair into multi colored shit dreads. I had enough problems getting a girlfriend without all that noise. But I loved the music. There was something about the preciseness of it all and the pure focus on dark hatred and self-pity, made my little depressed 15-year-old heart a flutter. All the drugs involved in it kind of sucked but you have to make some concessions here and there.
Skinny Puppy were one of my favorite bands and it was simply because they were mine. Truly mine. My friends were kind of into Ministry and kind of into NIN. But even those bands they didn’t care that much about. But Skinny Puppy was a whole different level. Ogre was never even close to singing. This song might be his closest to carrying a tune as opposed to his crazy stream of conscious barking. The music still doesn’t make sense to me sometimes. The live performance, which I would try to force on my buddy Jay a lot through the “Ain’t it Dead Yet” video, was a wild ride. Weirdo performance art with crazy death imagery behind them, while Ogre covered himself in slime and acted out shooting up junk while fighting a dead baby in a basinet with a cross. Trust me it makes sense. Kind of.
When they decide to throw in samples and change up the beat, really has it’s own internal logic in all of their songs. An internal logic that only a bunch of junkies named Nivek Ogre, cEvin Key and D.Wayne Goettel would understand. But I understood it to an extent and it really made it feel special and furthered my “me against the world” outlook. If even my friends didn’t like my music, what the hell hope should I have. That may sound negative but I really think it helped to make me who I am today. And dammit I’m pretty great. Again…probably didn’t help me get a girlfriend but. Live and learn I guess. My lady, Kristi, still gets annoyed when I listen to this bunch of weirdo’s and still loves me all the more.
So this is “Killing Game” from “Last Rights”. If it sounds kind of familiar, you might recognize it from the “very special episode” of the Real World, where Tammy talks about having an abortion. This was the soundtrack. Even though the song is about vivisection. IT WASN’T NOT FUNNY. Or was it?
