Brett CallwoodInto Remission: Canadian industrial music pioneers Skinny Puppy are calling it a day. Four decades after forming in Vancouver, the core pairing of Nivek Ogre and cEvin Key have had enough – of the band in general and of each other.
We speak to both of them on the phone, a couple of days apart and, while they both stop short of bad-mouthing each other, it’s clear that this is a relationship that soured some time ago, at least off stage. That’s a shame, particularly because both are charming in conversation – open and easy to like. But it all serves as a reminder that we never really know what’s going on behind closed doors, and neither Ogre nor Key want to publicly air their dirty laundry. For now, we can assume that the farewell tour that is about to hit L.A. really is the last hurrah.
“I clearly remember saying in interviews back in the ’80s that there’s no way we’re gonna be doing this when we’re 60,” says Key. “So now we’re 60-plus, and it’s bizarre that we’re still going. I think we find ourselves in a situation where we have to put our foot down and say OK, we’re gonna really concentrate and put something together that is going to be special, especially when considering how devoted our fans have been over the time. It’s true that the band’s inner relations haven’t been all that great over the years. What’s really great is that this last tour has been the most enjoyable tour I think I’ve ever had with the band. So in a lot of ways, maybe saying ‘this is it’ made it a lot easier to approach it and to take it on.”
Ogre agrees about the strained inner relations, stating that they have spent 40 years “running that fine line between acrimony and getting work done.” He elaborates that he’s a very different person now to the one that started the band with Key in ‘83.
“The things that I was singing about in 1983 to 1990 and all through that were very authentic for me, in the sense that I was struggling quite a bit of the time and that was going straight to paper – pen to paper, paper to voice, voice to theatrics,” Ogre says. “That’s what made it an amazing experience for me, the authenticity of what I was putting out there. It kinda makes me feel a little jaded about music moving forward. Not music per say, but the aspect of emotion in music and how a lot of it is performative more than real. A lot of music today isn’t really about the aspects of the emotion and are more about trying to find a place within placement for a commercial or something. Music has just changed so much.”
The deterioration of the band relationships is particularly sad when considering that Ogre used to view it as a family.
“There’s a lot of people that have gone by the wayside for specific reasons that I’m not going to get into, which have lessened that feeling of family for me to the point of zero,” Ogre says. “Like, touring as a family. Those are the people that I tour with, with ohGr, my solo project. All those musicians come with me on that and that’s a great thing. But without getting too pointed with the acrimony or with the baggage, I think to put it in a really nice way, when there’s no sense of family, there’s really nothing left in the project. People thinking that we’re gonna come back for a money grab in 10 years – it’s not gonna happen. In 10 years, I’ll be 70, so it’s definitely not gonna happen. But in five years or three years or whatever, it’s not gonna happen.”
When we ask Ogre if there’s anything at all that he’ll miss, he offers a firm “No!” Key is a little more forthcoming when praising Ogre’s on stage performances – his energy, commitment and theatricality.
“Throughout my history of performing with Ogre, even witnessing his performances is unbelievable,” Key said. “The guy puts everything into the performances and into the shows. Quite honestly, most of our problems were off stage. On stage, we seem to have a huge amount of respect for what each other does. So I don’t disrespect the work. I think that over time conditions and scenarios can come into play. Say for instance, when you get signed to a major label the major label starts to fiddle around with your ingredients, as happened to us with Rick Rubin and American. That really put a lot of damage within our inner framework, offending our previous producers and all sorts of things happened. I learned the hard way about what that all meant.”
But it was his work alongside Dwayne Goettel, who was a member of Skinny Puppy from 1986 until his death in ‘96, that Key holds closest to his heart.
“I only got to work with Dwayne for nine years, but we did manage to make a number of albums through that time,” Key says. “But the memory of working with him is unsurpassed. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody more creative, and when you gel with a partnership, I always had the feeling that there was an excitement for every single day that I went to the studio. I will say that VIVIsectVI is where we really started exploring uncharted territory, with creating music entirely out of regurgitated radio transmissions. It sounded like a crazy concept at the time but now that I think back on it, I think that we got such great results. So between VIVIsectVI, Too Dark Park, and Last Rights, it was a plethora of thinking idealism. Those three are my favorites.”
Ask any band that fits into the industrial music subculture, and they’ll quickly cite Skinny Puppy as a major influence alongside the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. As is often the case with pioneers though, the Skinny Puppy guys aren’t too keen on the genre tag.
“I’ve never taken to that moniker,” Ogre says. “As far as the scene goes, it seems to have devolved into more of a metal vibe, for the most part. All of the stuff that I loved about industrial music that came out of Genesis, with industrial records, or even going back to Stockhausen, all of that kind of, just freedom to do whatever with whatever. That’s the thing that’s missing in industrial music. It took on a uniform and a pattern, and a way of delivery and stuff like that, and I don’t think it was ever supposed to have that. It’s just turned into another genre, and probably a genre that doesn’t really represent its original form.”
“When we started there wasn’t the term of industrial dance music really,” says Key. “My perspective was really that they utilized SCR-78s or TR66 drum machines, so my whole idea at the beginning was, we’re framed around this dance club, the legendary Love Affair in Vancouver. It was this super vibrant world where I think my first goal was to simply get played in that club. When I came back to the studio and realized that I could have fun playing with gigantic drum sounds versus small drum sounds, that was the benchmark of our first album. I think that’s really what pounded – it quickly was played in the Love Affair. Then I noticed that when it went out to other clubs, it was played there, too. I did not expect that. It took off, and ever since it took off, people like Al Jourgensen said that as soon as he heard Remission, that’s it. He decided that he needed a change overnight. Started on Twitch. You never know if that’s gonna stop or start. So that’s been an interesting perspective to say the least. Interesting to witness all of this.”
That said, their influence on everyone from Ministry and Nine Inch Nails to Front 242 is undeniable, no matter what you call it. They’re going to be missed. Fortunately, both Ogre and Key will continue to create music, albeit separately.
“I have ohGr, which is cool,” says Ogre. I’m working on a project right now – we’ve just started it and got about four tracks – with Paul Barker (Ministry), and is touring with us and Lead Into Gold, and Dave Ogilvie, who’s Skinny Puppy old producer. Ken Marshall is our old engineer with Skinny Puppy, and we’re gonna put a project together. We haven’t got a name for it yet, but that’s right on the tail end of this tour. We’re gonna dig into it. We’re all over the place. Paul’s moving down here in April or something. So we’ll do that. And probably some more ohGr. Then I’m gonna get my feet back into film a little bit. Just see what’s there. I’ve been really fortunate to collaborate with some really incredible people.”
“I’ve just finished scoring Silent Hill: Ascension which comes out on Halloween,” adds Key. “That’s an interactive video game, and that was a year-long project. So I was pretty consumed within that world. It was interesting. I really love how that was perfectly suited for who I am as a writer. I never thought there’d be the perfect setting, but Silent Hill, and the way that that whole world works, is perfect for the music that – actually, I heard that the original score was inspired by Skinny Puppy, so it’s full circle. So that’s an interesting world that’s come up. Also, I’ve been collaborating with, ironically, my other friend who used to be in Skinny Puppy 40 years ago, Bill Leeb. We just made a new album for Cyberaktif, which is 32 years after our last album. So I don’t know of a band that came along 32 years after and made their second album. I can assure myself first that this is definitely a better album than we’ve made in a long time. So a lot of good energies went into this and I think people are really gonna dig it. That comes out early in 2024.”
Before then, we get to say a fond goodbye at at least one of four shows at the Belasco. There might be a few differences between the sets, but not many.
“We had plans on switching the set up, but Kevin came in at the end and said he wants to keep it the same,” says Ogre. “Which is easier for me theatrically. I’ve added some stuff to the show in general, as I always get the luxury to do if we do two runs. I always kick myself for not doing it on the first run. So I’ve added a few theatrical bits, which I’m really excited about. That’s my job, to get the vocals down so it’s all very live for me. And then get the theatrics in line with the vocals. It’s something I’ve always done.”
“Certainly we’ve had to learn a whole bunch of other songs, so there’s gonna be some songs that we didn’t do on the last tour, interjected into the night,” says Key. “It’s four nights at the Belasco, so we’ve got to change something up.”
And with that, Skinny Puppy will be basically done. This complicated, gloriously disjointed, theatrical, wonderful mess that we’ve loved for so long. Thankfully, we’ll always have the music. Nobody can ever take that away. But as much as we can probe, we’ll never really know just how uncomfortable things got.
“it would be madness to think that the narrative for a band could be presented by just one person,” says Ogre in conclusion.
Quite!
Into Remission: Skinny Puppy performs at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 1; Saturday, Dec. 2; Monday, Dec. 4; and Tuesday, Dec. 5 at the Belasco.
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