|
 |
SKINNY PUPPY
TATTS & TUNES
by Jonathan Williams
Photos by Frank Mullen
From the November 2005 issue of Prick Magazine.
|
 Nivek Ogre (singer). |
|
|
|
It could be easily argued that without Skinny Puppy there would be no such thing as industrial or electronic rock as we know it today. From the band's caustic aural assault to the blood-and-mud-drenched spectacles that reflected the lyrical and musical imagery, Skinny Puppy predated Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and countless other acts that went on to force themselves into the public eye by combining dance beats with abrasive guitars and dark theatricality.
After the loss of founding member Dwayne Goettel to a heroin overdose prior to the release of The Process in 1996, Nivek Ogre and cEvin Key went their separate ways, leaving Skinny Puppy seemingly in the doghouse.
But in 2004, the band not only returned with The Greater Wrong of the Right, an album that explores new sonic directions and pertinent philosophical and political ideas, but also a North American tour with a multimedia sensory overload that visually rivaled anything the band had done in the past. Joining Ogre and Key on that tour were former Professional Murder Music/Thrill Kill Kult drummer Justin Bennett and longtime collaborator William Morrison, who not only played bass and guitar but was also responsible for some of the images projected behind the band during the shows.
"Bill's done all our videos for the last 14 years," says Ogre. "Bill's been a really close friend to both me and [cEvin]. He played in ohGr, he's played in Skinny Puppy, he's been part of this history for a long time. He probably knows more about it than we do [because] he's got kind of an objective perspective on things."
|
|
Morrison, who is a filmmaker outside of his contributions to Skinny Puppy, also did videos for Key's Tear Garden and Download projects during Skinny Puppy's hiatus and directed The Greater Wrong of the Right Live, a recently-released DVD of the band's 2004 tour that includes a second disc featuring a documentary on U.S. foreign policy called "Information Warfare" and footage from two of Skinny Puppy's earlier tours.
But he and Ogre share a deeper connection that incorporates their spiritual beliefs and musical endeavors in the form of symbols both have tattooed on their bodies. Around the same time The Process was recorded, the two worked on a musical project of the same name.
"The tattoo that Ogre's got on his back is the auspicious knot, which is one of the eight core Buddhist symbols, which is also the root of the swastika," says Morrison. "The reason we came across this logo is because we based our project around a group from the '60s, a deviant psychotherapy cult called The Process Church of the Final Judgment. At the time, they were sort of debunked and sort of under the wire and they had a lot of interesting [symbolism] and ideals that were kind of in line with what we were creating at the time, so we adopted the symbols at that point."
|
|
The rest of the band's tattoos are related to their shared devotion to Skinny Puppy. Ogre, Morrison and Bennett all have some variation on the SP logo and Ogre himself has a lot of ink inspired by artwork from previous albums and projects.
"This is off of Too Dark Park and it's over some scarification that I did myself," he says of the piece on his forearm. "I've got a Krell fighting dog. It's Irish [and] I've got some Irish in me. It's a wounded Krell fighting dog, so it has a bit of a glimpse of what the original tough fighting dog would be. I've got a RevCo tattoo from when I did some time with Revolting Cocks. I have another tattoo that's based on a Skinny Puppy design and that's going to be mirrored on the other side with one that Steven Gilmore, who does all of our cover art, is going to do.
"The stories are more about people and places," he says of the inspiration behind his ink. "One was done with an old girlfriend to cover up a tattoo from an even older relationship that was done by a heroin addict who was so shaky when he did it. We both got these Aramaic vowels, myself and my ex-wife, by a junky who died two weeks later of an overdose. I think we both considered that to be a sign of bad luck and we both have since covered them over."
|
 Ogre (singer). |
 Justin Bennett (drums). |
 William Morrison (guitar and bass). |
|
Of course, with Ogre being covered in costumes and gore during Skinny Puppy performances, it's hard for most people to ever see his tattoos. And while his ink reflects events from his past, the creature you see onstage in the new DVD is more about what's currently going in his mind about the future of a world where war never ceases and casualties become a footnote to gossip and cover-ups.
"I'm starting to think of myself in terms of working between the mindset of a soldier being used in a war for money and oil and resources and being given the ideology of it being a religious conflict or clash of beliefs or a fight against terrorism and being so convinced of that that one becomes enraged with power," he says of the character he portrays onstage. "At the same time, I have a certain amount of sympathy for that character, it becomes a monstrous kind of character for me. At the end there's almost the idea of this person being dragged into a conflict that's much bigger than they ever thought.
|
|
"I have a lot of military stuff that I'm playing around with, but I'm not using that in a negative way at all because I really feel for those kids," he continues. "I kind of portray myself as a victimized monster because ultimately a soldier is a soldier [and] a soldier wants to kill. I'm not going to stand up for someone who has that mindset, but at the same time I see those kids as a pawn in a really nefarious game right now and it's almost like a blood sacrifice to me in a lot of ways."
Skinny Puppy is currently working on its next album, which may not be as overtly reactionary as The Greater Wrong of the Right.
"We're all going to come together with a bunch of ideas and we'll take that and mold into whatever is happening at the time," he says. "I have an initial idea of kind of going back inside the mind a little bit and kind of internalizing things a little more, but I'm not sure about that at this point. We'll have to see what's going on outside at the time."
|
|
| |
|
|
|
