Skinny Puppy - Handover
Skinny Puppy started their brand of industrial noise terror was back in 1982. The band never bothered with commercial success but they are accreted with paving the way for many industrial bands in the eighties and early nineties. Always overlooked Skinny Puppy should be put in the same inspirational league with the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Kraftwerk, and many early synth pioneers. It's been 26 years since their first EP Remission way back in 1984 and 2011's Handover has been a long time in coming. With the Greater Wrong of the Right (2004) and Mythmaker (2007), the untimely death of Dwayne Goettel in 1995 it seemed if cEvin Key and Nivek Ogre had lost sight of what Skinny Puppy use to be: one of the most creative industrial bands around. Thankfully that vision is back! Unlike 2007’s Mythmaker, Handover does not sound like the leftovers from an Ohgr release. This Skinny Puppy release incorporates a large pallet of electronic sounds and effects, mixed with elements of dance, post-industrial, electronica and even breakcore and vocal style more akin to Skinny Puppy(SP).
That for many will not make it an easy listening album. Tracks like Brownstone with its rambling words will remind older fans of Barp tracks, Noisex with it erratic beats and strange vocal sounds show the old experimental side of Skinny Puppy. There quieter moments that remind you of The Process release and guitar driven tracks of Rabies.
Handover was always going to be divisive. Older fans, like me struggled get into the post-Dwayne releases yet Handover is the best SP release to-date post Dwayne. Newer fans coming into SP from 2004 will find Handover's experimentalism hard to swallow if not accustomed to the SP back catalogue.
Handover is a fine addition to this pioneer bands discography and again shows the pretenders how this type experimental electronic music should be executed. Anyone with an ounce of interested in electronic/experimental/industrial music should buy this release.