Skinny Puppy is an industrial band, formed in 1982 by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie) and engineer/producer Dave 'Rave' Ogilvie, adding keyboardist Wilhelm Schroeder (aka Bill Leeb) for their debut LP, Bites before replacing him with Dwayne Goettel (see 1982 in music). They are considered to be one of the most influential industrial bands ever.

Bites earned the band a fanbase, which they increased with Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986 in music), Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate (1987 in music) and VIVIsectVI (1988 in music). During the late 1980s, the band members began working on various side projects. On their 1989 album Rabies, Ogre had brought in Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen as a producer, resulting in a album with poor critical and fan reception. However, the follow-up to Rabies, Too Dark Park, is widely regarded as a landmark of the industrial genre. Tension began to run high among the band members during and after the completion of 1992 album Last Rights (copyright problems with a Timothy Leary sample in the song "Left Handshake" led to its exclusion from the album), and it became increasingly difficult for them to continue working together. This, combined with creative differences and drug problems, resulted in Goettel's disappearance with the master tapes for the forthcoming album, The Process. He was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home in 1995 (1995 in music). The remaining band members completed the album for release in 1996, and then disbanded (see 1996 in music).

Skinny Puppy has always dealt with political, philosophical, and personal issues (most notably animal rights) through a constantly evolving medium of contemporary music and creative compositional practices, drawn from avant-garde and industrial music styles.

Skinny Puppy is noted for their live shows, which feature many performance art elements, and indeed might be considered the focus of the band. Nivek Ogre was quoted as saying "the best part of skinny puppy is the shows and the videos".

In 2000, Ogre and Key performed as Skinny Puppy at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, and then toured together in 2001 to support Ogre's solo project, Ohgr. In 2003 they started working with collaborators such as Danny Carey of Tool to produce the new full-length Skinny Puppy album, entitled The Greater Wrong of the Right, which was released on May 25, 2004.

Key continues his musical efforts in the bands Download and Tear Garden, while Ogre collaborates with major industrial acts KMFDM, Pigface and his solo project ohGr.

Skinny Puppy toured in support of "The Greater Wrong of the Right" twice in 2004, during which several shows were filmed for a possible forthcoming DVD release. Recent news reveals that a new album is in the works as well as another European tour for the Summer of 2005.

Discography

• Back and Forth (independently released cassette, 1983)
• Remission (1984)
• Bites (1985)
• Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
• Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
• VIVIsectVI (1988)
• Ain't It Dead Yet? (live, 1989)
• Rabies (1989)
• Twelve Inch Anthology (1990)
• Too Dark Park (1990)
• Last Rights (1992)
• Back and Forth Series 2 (CD re-release with new material, 1992)
• (one disc of live material and another disc of archive material, 1996)
• The Process (1996)
• The Singles Collect (1999)
• B-Sides Collect (1999)
• (live recording of Doomsday Festival reunion show, 2001)
• Puppy Gristle (From the Vault limited release) (2002)
• Back and Forth Series 6 (From the Vault limited release) (2003)
• The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)

External links

• Skinny Puppy News
• Subconscious Studios
• ohGr
• As of 2004 Skinny Puppy is on tour in North American summer information on tour-dates venues