Let's face it - some of their material was pretty dire. The great stuff - fabulous though it was, was the exception rather than the rule. For every "Process", there was a "Rabies"; for every "Assimilate"-style dance classic there was a half-hour long instrumental of pure white noise.
Even "Assimilate" is not exactly something you can sing along to. For all its brilliance "Assimilate" just sounds like a rabid hamster squeaking dementedly along to the Dr Who theme. Of course, it's still my favourite.
"Assimilate" is amongst the other of Puppy's more melodic moments - the "greatest hits" as it were, to appear on "Remix DysTemper", and these are the moments we love Puppy for. Still, like the back catalogue it celebrates, it is again a patchy offering. To be fair, "The Process" is a complete album. There is only one track [the first one on side two] that I skip past - the rest is solid grooves and heart-rending melodies throughout. Melody Maker used to say that Skinny Puppy had the ability to manipulate mood. That was true enough, but again for every song that reduced you to blissed-out tears, there was another one behind it to make you throw something at the stereo. "The Process" was the one album you could listen to all the way through. Not only that, but you wanted to turn it over and play it again the minute it had finished. There were at least three singles on that album. It could - and should - have been a classic.
Unfortunately, fate intervened in its grimmest guise. I never met Dwayne, and I wish I had. He seemed like a really nice guy. Everybody I've met who knew him loved him. But his death brings not only loss to those who loved him - it could also rob us of the ability to step back and appreciate objectively the cool tunes he wrote. Let's not be so stifled with a need to respect his memory as to lose our capacity to speak the truth. I won't be afraid to say that some of Skinny Puppy's material was bloody awful. And I'll be just as honest when I say that "Candle" is one of the greatest songs I have ever heard.
The writer isn't there to be objective - reviews are simply our opinions. On the other hand, I'm not going to let the people who wrote it get in the way of the songs they wrote. The band themselves certainly didn't. Horribly, the surprising thing isn't the macabre end to the whole sorry spectacle, but how three such mismatched people could possibly have been in the same band for all that time. To be brutally honest, it seems incredible that nobody could have forseen the disaster that putting the introverted, intimidating cEvin Key in a room with Nivek "Let Me Introduce You To My Inner Child" Ogre would bring. It's the question nobody appears to have dared to ask. I've met cEvin. I've met Ogre. They're two people you wouldn't even invite to the same party, let alone suggest they form a band. Still, you never do forsee these things do you? It's a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare. You might have thought it would be bad, but not... well, not that bad... And like Shakespeare, you can't sit there pointing the finger, it's just horrible, unthinkable bad luck.
Which makes you ask the inevitable question: What on earth possessed these otherwise rational, intelligent but mismatched people to not only form a band, but stay together all those years?
The rest of me might be sadly asking
the question, but I think my ears already know the answer...