Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)"Too Dark Park" is the best-loved Skinny Puppy album amongst hardcore fans and certainly a good place to start for the uninitiated. SP's previous effort "Rabies" (1989) is slightly easier to listen to, mostly due to slick production courtesy of Al Jourgensen (please tell me you know who that is). However, unless your mind is of the warped and delinquent variety, you'll find that Skinny Puppy is ANYTHING but easy listening. Skinny Puppy is a horror show for the ears, sonic masochism, a terrible but engaging nightmare that you can't wake from. In that respect, TDP is arguably the most quintessential Puppy album. It's harsh, dense, chaotic, and angry as hell, a culmination of the sound that they had been driving towards since they banded in 1982. (Their next album, 1991's "Last Rights", is a slight departure into experimentalism while 1996's "The Process" sounds like a completely different band.)
But be forewarned. I suspect that most people won't be able to recognize this as music. People who consider industrial-lite fluff like Filter and Stabbing Westward "cutting edge" or "hardcore" are in for a big, big (big) shock. In fact, they'd probably do best to pass on this band; I doubt they'd "get it". But you're probably here because you want something BIZARRE and DIFFERENT!
"Too Dark Park" jerks to life with "Convulsion", probably the most dense and chaotic track on the album. Inter-cut with samples from a documentary on LSD, Nivek Ogre's vocals and lyrics make it clear upfront that he's just about lost it. "Tormentor", the next track, is my favorite. Cevin Key and Dwayne Goettel morph what could've been a relatively standard industrial-dance track into something dark and sinister. "Spasmolytic" is just flat out insane. Phrases and words are strung together in maniacal fashion, suggesting an intense and hellish drug withdrawal whilst living in urban squalor. The single version of "Spasmolytic" gets the minimalist treatment, making it spookier and decidedly better (it should've been on this album, but you can get it on "The Singles Connection"). "Rash Reflection" shares a similar electro-sound with "Tormentor", but is decidedly more claustrophobic and terrifying. I'll stop here, but suffice it to say that every track is its own private nightmare and every one is equally as good as the next.
The lyrics are written in a drug-crazed William S. Burroughs style of free association. It's hard to understand what's going on, but that's all part of the experience. TDP forces you to live the nightmare of drug addiction/withdrawal and the mental chaos associated with it; the music adds emotional and visceral chaos, churning the whole vile mixture out of control. In case you're wondering, you don't have to be an addict or ex-addict to appreciate it - I've never touched a hard drug in my life. Drugs are a central theme, but there's so much more going on here.
As great as this album is, it's not even my favorite Skinny Puppy album. In the beginning they had a lo-fi 80's synth sound that was just perfect, plus they used a lot of obscure horror movie samples = fun times. So while this album is great, it gets even better.
Brap on.
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