Skinny Puppy was an influential industrial band, formed in 1982 by core mem… Read Full Bio ↴Skinny Puppy was an influential industrial band, formed in 1982 by core members cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) and Nivek Ogre (ohGr) (Kevin Ogilvie) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They officially split up following the completion of their Final Tour on December 5, 2023.

Inspired by the groundbreaking music of Chrome, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Portion Control, The Legendary Pink Dots, and others, Skinny Puppy experimented with electronic recording techniques and methods. the band composed multi-layered music generally using keyboards, synthesizers, found sounds, drum machines, live percussion, tape splices, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments. Whereas many contemporary remixes and re-edits of songs were created in order to make a song more suitable for dancing or different radio formats, Skinny Puppy approached remixing and re-editing as an artistic process of reinterpreting compositions, often using remixes to push their sound into styles of ambient, dub and techno. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term brap, coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".

Skinny Puppy's first two proper releases, Bites and Remission, fall somewhere between the found-sound chaos of early Cabaret Voltaire and the abrasive, futuristic synthpop of the Units or Crash Course in Science. While the intense synth programming, abstract rhythms, and surreal samples--all Puppy trademarks--are present here, the albums owe as much to new wave as to industrial.

A subsequent EP, Chainsaw, featured a remix of Bites's "Assimilate" that earned the band some attention from club DJs. 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse earned Skinny Puppy greater attention, as "Dig It" and "Stairs and Flowers" became alternative club and college radio hits; the video for the former was played occasionally on MTV. The album is arguably less club-friendly than its predecessors, as the band continues to refine a claustrophobic, almost surreal sound that buries rhythm and melody. The follow-up, Cleanse, Fold, and Manipulate treads similar territory.

VIVIsectVI was a breakthrough for the band, with "Testure" becoming their biggest club hit to date, and the album itself was received warmly by college radio. The title of the album was a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (ie. the "666 sect"). The album shows SP integrating more political and social themes: "Testure" is an animal rights song; "VX Gas Attack" concerns the use of chemical weapons; "State Aid" promotes sexual abstinence to stop the spread of AIDS/HIV.

Ogre had become very interested in Ministry and Al Jougensen's side projects, and he persuaded the rest of the band to allow Jourgensen to produce Rabies. While "Worlock" (a track Jourgensen didn't produce) remains an industrial club classic, the album was received coolly, as many thought Jourgensen's heavy metal guitar-based signatures did not compliment SP's more complex, intricate sonic sculptures. The band briefly disbanded afterward.

They reformed and returned to their electronic roots with Too Dark Park, a hallucinogenic album that owes as much to psychedelia as industrial music. Two years later, "Last Rights" covered similar territory, culminating in the epic sound sculpture "Download." Although their sound had moved away from industrial dance, these albums expanded the band's audience, and provided the template for many industrial bands of the 1990s.

Following "Last Rights", the band, poised for a major breakthrough in the wake of Nine Inch Nails' commercial success, left their longtime label Nettwerk for American Recordings. Their highly anticipated followup was unfortunately marred by personal tragedy - the death of Dwayne Goettel - and the band's inability to agree on a direction for the record. Numerous producers, including Martyn Atkins (PigFace/Invisible Records founder) and Roli Mosimann (Swans), came and went without success; finally the band regrouped with longtime collaborator Dave "Rave" Ogilvie to finish "The Process". The band expanded their range, working with gothic pop and heavy metal, alongside their familiar electronic textures. While seemingly rushed to completion following Goettel's death (it sounds half-finished in parts), it is an interesting change for the group. Unfortunately American Recordings, tired of waiting for the record, did little to promote it. Skinny Puppy broke up afterward.

With interests in filmmaking, they made a number of music videos, each attempting to further the theme and concept of the composition at hand. Most of these videos received little air play by major music video networks such as MTV (USA) and MuchMusic (Canada) and some were outright banned. For example the video for "Worlock" was universally banned because it is a "non stop gore fest" of clips from various horror movies. Because none of these clips were authorized for usage in the video it has never been commercially available.

Their concerts have been marked by their bizarre and bloody conceptual performance art, which for every concert was planned with the intention of challenging the notions of all who observed. Their music had some acceptance in dance clubs because of its danceable beats, but had little play on commercial radio. Skinny Puppy had little commercial success outside of Canada, but their influence on industrial music is immense.

The band began with the intention of doing something "raw" and "real." Ogre's vocals, one of Skinny Puppy's most recognizable features, are typically roughly growled snarls of half-sentences and fragmented stream of consciousness. Lyrical themes included animal rights, politics, religion, horror, drug abuse, disease, and environmental degradation; these themes were often lyrically and conceptually intertwined. Other core aspects of the Skinny Puppy sound include the mixture of heavy sampling and experimental noise with softer musical styles sometimes approaching synthpop.

Post-punk politics are a recurring theme utilised by Skinny Puppy. Some say the meaning of their name is that their music and lyrics give a view of the world from the eyes of a starving animal. They have long had an interest in animal rights; this is most obvious in their song Testure, which is about vivisection and other animal testing being scientific fraud. During many of their concerts Ogre would take the role of "scientist" and experiment on a stuffed animal. In 1988 they were arrested for their mocked-up vivisections, and found it ironic to be arrested for a parody of what was happening for real across the street from their concert. During their TGWOTR tour, criticism of the Bush regime was a recurring theme, particularly during their performance of VX Gas Attack, a song about atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein, originally released while he was still considered an ally of the United States.

The last two studio albums are points of contention for old school Puppy fans. During the recording of The Process, the band broke up. Even more tragically, Dwayne Rudolph Goettel died, from an apparent heroin overdose at his parent's home, soon afterwards. Some people say that cEvin, Nivek, and Dwayne didn't connect as well on this album as they had earlier because their respective musical interests were diverging at the time, others claim it was the heroin.

Key and Ogre later reunited as Skinny Puppy for a one-off concert in Germany in 2003. Afterwards, they decided Skinny Puppy should continue as an ongoing project. The newly reconstituted Skinny Puppy released The Greater Wrong of the Right in 2004, their first studio album in 8 years, and have been continuing since, constantly evolving their sound.

There have been a number of Skinny Puppy side projects, both before, and after the breakup in 1995. The Tear Garden is a collaboration between cEvin and Edward Ka-Spel (and later most band members) of The Legendary Pink Dots. Other noteable side projects include Download, Hilt, Plateau, Cyberaktif (a collaboration between Key & Goettel and Bill Leeb, a.k.a. Wilhelm Schroeder), Rx (one-off collaboration between Ogre and Martin Atkins), ADuck (Goettel's side project), A CHUD Convention (one-off collaboration with a;GRUHM...), Ogre's contributions to Pigface, Ogre and Mark Walk's band ohGr and solo releases from cEvin Key.

Gods Gift Maggot
Skinny Puppy Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Twilight last gleeming
...
Mercury with no degree
Bloody lies the black sun
Eyes of god
Skies the limit
Proceeding in this darkness way crawl in back at the end of your halo
You're bloody righteous

Declare the light wounding forever judgement of his righteousness
Said man in a plane
Falling back again
Over a chair
Chair backwards falling down
Knives in the eyes
Maggots fill the brain
Falling chair
Falling on the plane away
Rain, rain, atomic grin on the floor
In a pool of blood on lifeless grin
Back to the bedroom with a grin
Where the master remarks down the phantoms
Living out the miseries
Its hard to fathom what dead man will go
Its hard to fathom hard for game I'm gone
God gave maggots
God give maggots
God gave maggot
Eye socket in the face neverless and back again
Open wound inasmuch over silence backwash
God gives maggots
God gives maggots
Inside a away
Back to the cave
Description bottle way temples museum
Ghostly remain never rule gain
Never winning consolation of life
Brides work
Brides work and stay young
???
Labrynth
Follow
Savage
Compass is the easy road
To destroy magic creation
Built...
Motion
Come back to living
Must god give us maggots
God gives maggot
Confess maggot

My friend maggot
Life built maggot

Overall Meaning

The lyrics to Skinny Puppy's song "Gods Gift Maggot" paint a dark and disturbing picture of violence, fear, and confusion. The opening lines, "Twilight last gleaming...Mercury with no degree" set the scene for a world of chaos and uncertainty. The imagery of a "bloody" black sun and "knives in the eyes" suggest violence and pain. The reference to "eyes of God" and "wounding forever judgment of his righteousness" suggest a conflict between a divine being and those who have fallen short of his ideals.

The middle section of the song shifts to more fragmented and disjointed imagery. A man falls out of a plane over a chair, maggot-filled brains and a lifeless grin lay on the floor, and the phantoms are remarked down in the bedroom. These scenes are unsettling and difficult to piece together, but they contribute to the overall feeling of chaos and darkness in the song. The final lines about "com[ing] back to living" and "must god give us maggots" suggest a sense of hopelessness and inevitability.

Overall, the lyrics to "Gods Gift Maggot" are intense and challenging. The poetic language and fragmented imagery create a sense of unease and confusion that mirrors the song's themes of violence and hopelessness.

Line by Line Meaning

Twilight last gleeming
The sun has set and the sky's light is soon to disappear

Mercury with no degree
The temperature is extremely low, and the weather condition is intense

Bloody lies the black sun
The sky has turned red due to the sun's position, and it gives off a sense of violence

Eyes of god
The sky looks like it is watching over everything around it

Skies the limit
The sky is the highest point one can reach

Proceeding in this darkness way crawl in back at the end of your halo
Moving forward in the dark world and crawling back to the end of one's life

You're bloody righteous
You are self-righteous and believe your actions are always correct

Declare the light wounding forever judgement of his righteousness
Claiming that the light is harming an individual's judgement of what is right and wrong

Said man in a plane
A man was once in a plane, perhaps as a reference to a famous event or person

Falling back again
Repeating a past mistake and falling down again

Over a chair
Falling over a chair or stumbling over an obstacle

Chair backwards falling down
A specific imagery of a chair falling and increasing the sense of chaos and disorder

Knives in the eyes
The sensation of pain that feels sharp and unbearable like a knife, specifically in the eyes

Maggots fill the brain
The feeling of disgust and unease or the thought of something repulsive lingering in one's mind

Falling chair
Chair falling, perhaps referencing an earlier line and adding to the sense of chaos and disarray

Falling on the plane away
A once-promising life or effort is now falling apart and far away from success

Rain, rain, atomic grin on the floor
Bright and radioactive aftereffects of something that has a destructive impact, like a bomb going off

In a pool of blood on lifeless grin
Symbolizing the aftermath of an event that culminated in destruction or danger

Back to the bedroom with a grin
Returning to a situation that is not ideal and smiling through the pain

Where the master remarks down the phantoms
In a place where someone who understands the situation is present, and they record or comment on the things they see

Living out the miseries
Enduring and trying to survive through a bad circumstance or experience

Its hard to fathom what dead man will go
It's challenging to understand what one will experience once they pass away.

Its hard to fathom hard for game I'm gone
It's challenging to grasp the outcome or predict the future once the problems have gone too far.

God gave maggots
Insinuating that disease, decay, and destruction are a natural part of the world and the human experience

God give maggots
A plea or statement to reinforce the idea of destruction and disease being part of one's fate

God gave maggot
Reiteration that humans are born into a world where destruction and decay are inherent

Eye socket in the face neverless and back again
An intense image of someone losing an eye in a violent event, yet still having to face the aftermath and aftermath's consequences. Maybe the character has lost and regained his vision.

Open wound inasmuch over silence backwash
A visible injury that can't heal and continues to decay, even in the silence or stillness of the moment

God gives maggots
Strengthening the idea that people are born into a world of decay, disease, and destruction

God gives maggots
Reinforcing the idea that humans are born into a world where disease and chaos are inevitable

Inside a away
Mystery or fantasy hides within reality or truth

Back to the cave
Returning to a primitive or dark environment that symbolizes violence and danger

Description bottle way temples museum
A description of items or parts that aren't connected or relevant to each other, which increases the chaos of an already unsettling reality

Ghostly remain never rule gain
Increasing the feeling of emptiness over what remains after something or someone leaves

Never winning consolation of life
Not winning anything in life, including forgiveness or help when needed

Brides work
Women are lifted in status because of their ability to get married.

Brides work and stay young
Staying in the roles society dictates for women and feeling obligated to stay young and beautiful for too long can be draining.

Contributed by Brooklyn D. Suggest a correction in the comments below.

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