Search - Skinny Puppy :: Mind: Perpetual Intercourse

Classic Puppy.

Jonathan Duran | Albuquerque, New Mexico | 02/13/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Well this isn't The Puppy's best release but it has several essential tracks such as "One Time, One Place", "Dig It", "200 years", "Three Blind Mice" and "Chainsaw" which is pretty much one of the freakn coolest SP songs ever! Not as dark or disturbing as their later stuff but with more of a dance vibe. A couple of the songs are a bit weak for Skinny Puppy standards but when the songs are good they tend to be damn good."

FAT DAWG !

Part Time Saint | RepubliK of Texas | 02/26/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I smoked some grass, put this on & thought I had bugs crawling all over me ! These are some groovy and hip toons."

Forgotten is the morning dawn Mercury with no degree Bloody

Jonathan Dedward | Nowheresville, Slothwestern North America | 08/21/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In 1986, the third major Skinny Puppy recording arrived with major label backing (Capitol/EMI). What it contained pretty much cemented Kevin Ogilvie (Ogre) and Kevin Crompton (cEvin Key) as two of the foremost musical artists during the mid-eighties. It also heralded Dwayne Goettel's blessed arrival as Puppy's third official member. Anyone hoping for an club-friendly sequel to Bites would be disappointed however.



"One Time One Place" begins with a rather spare beat and surprisingly unmelodious chanting. Some hyperactive pounding and Ogre's screaming intrudes suddenly, then the song mellows again. "One Time...." swings back and forth between sad contemplation and bitter rage. The emotional vacillation remains consistent throughout the rest of the album. And for the first time in Puppy's career, we actually hear some recognizable, albeit squealing and discordant, guitar. What is going on here? In early songs, Ogre delivered his odd poems with a deliberately catchy military cadence/melody, but now there is no recognizable pop rhythm. This is not a dance song! 'Mind...' is a giant stylistic leap from its '85 predecessor Bites.



"God's Gift (Maggot)" is a personal favorite, and still rocks live shows (as of 2005 anyway). It begins slowly, building with tension that is every bit as eerie and grim as "One Time ..." but begins to hook you about halfway through. Again, this song eschews the dance beats and focuses on creating tension... then releasing it at precisely the best moment. It's an incredible composition. "Three Blind Mice" is gloomy, not a bit catchy, overladen with sounds, screams and chants. It's also brilliant: even the Cure could never make despair sound so visceral or interesting.



"Love" remixes the original Bites song only slightly, if at all, but I still enjoy it here. Hmm: "Stairs and Flowers." This is first truly challenging "instrumental" of the band's early output. It's a downright crazy mixture of drums, bizarre samples and unintelligible gibbering. For me it alternates between being compelling and unlistenable (recently leaning more towards the compelling side). To fully appreciate this presentation of fractured sanity, give it your full attention in a dark room with headphones on. Don't even consider playing this for your friends at a party. It'll either just disrupt the mood, or absolutely disturb everyone present. Ogre's stream of conscience musings takes center stage on "Antagonism," another mind-broken assemblage of screams and incoherent spoken word poetry that'll either thrill you or completely turn you off. "200 Years" finally provides a somewhat typical beat rhythm, punctuated by alarmed and confused voices, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with Everyone in this CRAZY PLACE?" (trivia: the samples are from a hilariously grim 1960 Twilight Zone episode called "Elegy").



"Dig It" is a milestone. Arguably Skinny Puppy's most famous and brilliant song, nothing I've heard sounds like it. The programmed drumming and quick metal-guitar punctuations in this song (along with the experimental work of post punk bands like Killing Joke and Big Black) pretty much informed 90's Industrial rock, and yet even today stands alone. Ogre's inimitable melodic cadence neatly fills the spaces between layers of distorted screams, growls, more "Elegy" samples, Gregorian monks, and synth harmonies. Aside from its future implications, "Dig It" is probably one of the most definitive examples of the unique Skinny Puppy sound... something most younger people wouldn't believe was recorded during the mid-eighties.



"Burnt With Water" closed the original LP perfectly with disturbing samples, (televangelist sound bites and lines from The Exorcist) and a militant marching beat. 'Mind...' is dark but energetic original and ideologically vague. It is also one of Skinny Puppy's best works in my opinion.



The cd version (released in '88) contains additional tracks from the Chainsaw EP: "Chainsaw," "Addiction" and a remix of "Stairs and Flowers," plus "Deep Down Trauma Hounds." "Chainsaw" is quite good, while "Addiction" and "Deep Down..." are minimalist versions of songs that would be granted album release the following year. These additional tracks are great in their own right, but in my opinion detract from the compositional unity of 'Mind...' in its original form. Still, 5 stars for this, one of their greatest recordings."