Ain't It Dead Yet?

Ain’t It Dead Yet? documents Skinny Puppy’s performance at Toronto Concert Hall on May 31, 1987, supporting their album Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. The show was also released on video, in keeping with SP’s theatrical approach to concerts. Even just on CD, though, it’s worth hearing. cEvin Key, who handles most of the music, radically reshapes songs, extending them with noisy interludes and disorienting, unexpected samples. Vocalist Nivek Ogre’s performance shifts from cruel sneers to sniveling terror as he seems to huddle at the center of Key and Dwayne Goettel’s whirlwind of distorted sounds and pounding, off-kilter rhythms. The set list is heavy on tracks from Cleanse Fold…, but all their previous records (Bites, Remission, and Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse) are represented. There’s relatively little crowd noise; perhaps the audience was stunned into submission by what they were seeing and hearing. Skinny Puppy were one of the most unsettling and powerful acts on the industrial scene, and on this night, they were out for blood.