Worlock
By Skinny Puppy
“Sometimes, as musicians, finding the music genre you are meant to work on takes a while.”
Making music, like all forms of art, needs constant inspiration. You need to feel inspired to move on and be excited about what you produce. Every artist and every musician is worried about losing interest in what they are doing, so eventually, you focus on yourself and your aspirations rather than the ones of your bandmates. It's the only way to escape from the stagnation of routines.
Producer and drummer Kevin Crompton, known professionally as cEvin Key, started working on his side-project Skinny Puppy in 1982 while still a member of the new wave Canadian band Images in Vogue. What was supposed to be just a side project soon became an exciting way for Crompton to experiment with more industrial and electronic sounds.
Crompton left Images in Vogue in 1986, when the band relocated to Toronto, indicating that their "new romantic" sound was too commercial for his musical tastes. The statement becomes a manifesto of intentions when you play Rodent, the opening track of Skinny Puppy's sixth studio album Rabies. The track's delayed heavy drum beat is soon joined by a screaming voice by vocalist Kevin Ogilvie. The singer became the second official member of Skinny Puppy and adopted the stage name Nivek Ogre. The choice was made to avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in the band.
The duo started recording material in 1983 with the assistance of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie, who became the band's producer until 1995. After releasing their first cassette demo in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to the Vancouver label Nettwerk and recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals.
What I was writing at the beginning of this review happened again when Bill Leeb left the band a few years later, in 1986, to pursue his new musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb left, stating that his bandmates expressed other ideas than his and that he had been interested in singing.
Leeb was replaced by Dwayne Goettel on keyboards, synthesizers, sampler, and bass guitar. Goettel brought a whole new sense and aesthetic to the sound of the band, which could expand its sound to more electronic territories. Canadian press even started considering the band a Canadian answer to Depeche Mode.
Before Rabies, the band had already released five studio albums: Remission (1984), Bites (1985), Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986), Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987), and most importantly, VIVIsectVI (1988) which Melody Maker named as one of the best albums of 1988.
The band toured in support of VIVIsectVI, featuring an early manifestation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. If you aren't familiar with Skinny Puppy's music, Trent Reznor's band is a huge reference to understand their musical style. Especially if you listen to the track, we focus on today, Worlock, a true industrial synth dark ballad template for what bands like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson would have later produced.
The track features a sample of the guitars of Helter Skelter by The Beatles and a vocal sample of Charles Manson singing the song. The production is a masterpiece for the genre and inspired an entire music scene. The darkness and heavy use of effects (a Roland Harmonizer was used to create the vocoder effect during the chorus) still sound as it was produced today. Another element for Rabies was the featuring of Ministry's frontman Al Jourgensen, who co-produced the album and played guitar. Worlock is one of the band's most successful tracks and has been played on every Skinny Puppy's tour after its conception.
Skinny Puppy's live performances, described as "neo-dadaist shock theatre" by the Toronto Star and "grotesque" by the San Francisco Chronicle, and the association with the growing attention to the late 1980s new Industrial music scene, led the band to achieve greater success which increased even more when in 1986 when Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records.
