1. Skinny Puppy (Band)
Sure, you can look at their live show and see Ogre stalking the stage covered in blood and viscera and call it horrific. But that’s obvious and easy, and I think misses the point entirely. Limiting the band’s content to the onstage carnage or the extreme sounds is a mistake. It’s a metaphor for the internal self destruction that we inflict on ourselves and to a degree the world around us.
I think this is most noticeable on 1992’s album “Last Rights.” Written and recorded in a haze of drugs and depression, it’s a beast of an album, and probably their least accessible work.
It is scream therapy and, I believe, Skinny Puppy in it’s rawest form.
Sadly, shortly after the album was finished the band lost their keyboard player Dwayne Rudolph Goettel to a heroin overdose.
*Honorable mention to Michael Gira of the Swans, and author of The Consumer.