Customer Reviews

Too Dark Park

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Finally, my first review of a proper industrial album (my review for Ministry's Houses Of The Mole doesn't count since Ministry is in more of an "industrial metal" vein... besides, it wasn't much of a review anyway). And I couldn't have picked a better album to start with--though I gather that would-be rivetheads should probably cut their teeth on something easier. No matter.

Skinny Puppy's Too Dark Park is, in a word, SCARY. Nivek Ogre and cEVIN kEY are true composers of the dark and sinister. Listening to this album is like being in the throes of some drug-induced nightmare. Corrosive beats that sound like the drum machines are having seizures; noisy synths; disturbing, layered collages of samples (including the obligatory sirens); complex polyrhythmic assaults seemingly absent any trace of melody; and on top of this backdrop are Ogre's electronically distorted, hellish vocals. Forget Slayer and their pseudo-Satanic ilk, or the contrived teenage angst of Nine Inch Nails; this is what EVIL sounds like.

I've never understood why this album is labeled "industrial dance music." This sounds nothing at all like Revolting Cocks, Thrill Kill Kult, or KMFDM. No friendly dance beats here, just sheer sonic jihad from beginning to end. The lyrics fit the onslaught as well--insanity, pollution, exploitation, violence, mental illness, drug abuse. All the horrors of the modern world are on display.

Opener Convulsion sets the tone; Shore Lined Poison and Nature's Revenge have moments that would almost be considered "subdued" if they weren't so creepy and insane; Tormentor has its catchy beats eviscerated by waves of abrasive electronics; Rash Reflection has a suprisingly memorable chorus ("kiss the master's feet"); and Spasmolytic is pure f--king chaos, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Absolutely excellent, and highly recommended stuff if you think that you're up for it.

Yeah, its a great album. 'unique' 'deep' and 'original' don't even begin to describe it. Yeah, its a fan favorite. I agree with all praise.

It's also bloody insane. This was the first puppy cd i bought. Why? It looked pretty. Then i spun it, christ was i shocked. Too Dark Park is the most insane album i have ever heard. Convulsion is the most insane song. I hated this album for two weeks, it was so far from anything i had ever heard before.

At this time, my mum was convalescing with some rare deadly disease. I lived with her for a month, slept in a closet in a high rise appt, away from everything i knew and hoping mom wouldnt die.

One song stood out, Spasmolytic. That song was how i felt. In time I got it. There are points in life that are horrible and inexplicable. For those times, this is the album.

This is not a starter album. This is the fringe.

The first time you listen to Skinny Puppy, you shudder andwonder just how this is considered music. The second time, you listen and think this is still awful, but you're reluctant to stop the CD. The third time, you're addicted like the rest of us. That's pretty much how everybody is when it comes to Skinny Puppy. "Too Dark Park" is often considered Skinny Puppy's best album, as well as their most abrasive. "Too Dark Park" is the first Skinny Puppy CD I started out with, and unless you have some patience, you might want to start elsewhere in their catalog of work. As I guarantee you, you've never heard anything quite like this. "Convulsion" is a good intro to the album, not one of the better songs here, but solid nonetheless. "Tormentor" picks up the pace with a great beat and amazing synths. However, it's no match for "Spasmolytic", nor are any of the other songs here. "Spasmolytic", too put it bluntly, is demonic chaos, this song is just beyond perfect. Is it the evil synths? The cryptic voice and lyrics? Or maybe it's the fact that, even after all that I've said, you can still dance to it? It's a bit of everything, and then some. "Rash Reflection" is another brilliant song, great beats (as usual), great lyrics ("Kiss the master's feet"), haunting synths (as well as a violin), what's not to love?. If there was one song on "Too Park Park" that is somewhat accessible, it would have to be "Nature's Revenge", a great song without screaming or evil synths that would normally scare everyone and everything away. "Shoreline Posion" is a lot like the previous song, minus the vocal drawl. "Grave Wisdom" is the second best song here. Everything about this song clicks like you wouldn't believe, it sounds epic. "T.F.W.O." has a faster tempo than the other songs, and, as a result, is one of the best ones here (that little melody jingle sure surprised me). "Morpheus Laughing" has a great synth intro and I love that, yet another great song. "Reclamation" is an outro, but is nothing short of amazing itself. "Too Dark Park" is, to sum it up best, harsh. And in all honesty, I wouldn't want it any other way. Many pathetic Industrial bands aspire (wave to the nice people Stabbing Westward), Skinny Puppy on the other hand, were. Mental shock, indeed. A masterpiece.

What can I say, if you don't own this album GET IT NOW. Skinny Puppy is a once in a life time band, and perhaps the most overlooked and under rated. The word "Industrial" is pretty much meaningless when it comes to this CD. Every song on here is so unique, but keeps up the same draining yet addicting feel. Vocalist Nivek Ogre's lyrics are simply amazing, not to mention his growly, disembodied, and haunting voice. Cevin Key and Duane Goettel have created a living entity in thier music. Every beat has meaning and identity. Every song is listenable and powerfull, there is no "one hit song" on it. Every aspect of this album is astounding, right down to the cd artwork. This is definatly NOT commercial, nor radio friendly. Infact the first time you listen to Skinny Puppy it will sound pretty wierd. Keep listening. It will grow on you like an addiction.

I *strongly* recommend you go out and get this CD insted of just downloading 1 or 2 songs. And don't listen expecting to hear Marilyn Manson or NIN, yes those bands are great on their own, but this go way beyond that style. This goes waay beyond any style.

Also I tend call many artists and music Industrial, and tend to catagorize them. EXCEPT for Skinny Puppy and especially for Too Dark Park. This will always be my favorite cd and I know many will say the same...

Skinny Puppy first blew my senses back in the mid 80's at a time when keyboards ruled the Pop Rock field. What most bands like Erasure and Depeche Mode did with Electronic music eventually lead to its downfall as a musical force in my opinion. Few artists tried to use the technology pioneered by artists such as Brian Eno to maximize its full potential. The main reason traditional Rock rose to the heights that it did was mainly due to musicians stretching the guitars capacity of sound to its fullest regardless of the directions they took it in. Few in the Electronic or Industrial scene did the same with the keyboard or electronic music.

Skinny Puppy are the exception to the above mentioned statement. Its hard to understand their impact on this genre without realizing what was around at the time of their inception. Their first release, 'Back And Forth', in 1983 was a complete rejection of the electronic music that had been made so far and sought to wrestle the keyboard back from cheese ball bands and artists such as Gary Numan, Naked Eyes and yes, even early Ministry who used it only as filler in the disgusting Pop trash they were creating for the masses. They continued to toil away in relative obscurity for the next four to five years helping to build a musical movement shaped largely by them and even surpassed with suprising ease.

Their first crowning achievement in album form was 'VIVIsectVI' in 1988. It was a landmark release that challenged even their loyal fans with its disjointed sounds and textures of pain, death and even renewal while garnering them new fans at the same time. The album 'Rabies' followed and actually seemed like a bit of a step backward in comparison. It was straight ahead music that relied too heavily on guitar riffs and more than likely made Alien Jourgensen of Ministry finally realize the direction he wanted to go in permanently. For many fans 'Rabies' was satisfying on the surface but deep down many of us knew they were capable of so much more.

'Too Dark Park' is the album that WAS so much more. Quite simply it is the finest album of its genre. Every track assaults the senses while exciting them at the same time. There is nothing easy about listening to this album and its one of the few released in music history that demanded the listener sit down, shut up and pay attention completely. There is simply too much going on for a casual listener of music. 'Too Dark Park' crackles with sound textures and landscapes that threaten to overwhelm the mind but at its core there is a sense of melody and order that eventually takes over after repeated listens. I was in an airport waiting to fly to Texas a few days after it came out and listening to it for the seventh or eighth time when it completely took me over. the bustle and noise of the people around me melted away, I felt numb, and to this day its hard not to listen to it without getting chills at various points. I have close to 600 CD's in my collection with many different categories represented yet this album still ranks among the top five of all that I own or owned.

You don't have to like Industrial, Goth or Electronic music as a whole or even partly to appreciate what this band has achieved with 'Too Dark Park' and you could even get by with owning this album alone to represent its genre in your collection if you choose to. To most Industrial fans its the Dark Side Of The Moon, if you will, of the entire Industrial movement and nothing before or after it has come close. If you don't LISTEN to music intently then get back to your Soft Cell and A-Ha albums and leave this one be, however, if you are a varied soul with wild tastes and can appreciate masterpieces regardless of the avenue of music they come from then I highly recommend it.

Stand out tracks:

Tormentor
Shore Lined Poison
Spasmolytic
Morpheus

Well, what can one say about something that is perfect, except to simply state that it is perfect. Skinny Puppy remains the standard to be measured by in the Industrial genre. Always going their own route, they never sold out or tried to make their music too dancey or accessible like other bands of the genre did (Thrill Kill Kult, Nitzer Ebb, etc.) In fact one can really make a good arguement that they became less accessible as they went on. Definitely one of the top 5 bands in the genre's history (and most probably THE best band in it's history) this is their masterpiece; which may ,make Too Dark Park the best industrial release recorded to date.

Skinny Puppy is in great form on this release, opening the 1990's with a hard edged nightmarish world based on sampling and primarily synth based noise at a time when a lot of bands in the genre were trading in their keyboards for crunchy Ministry/thrash-esque guitar, most coming up with dubious results. They proved that you didn't have to be a guitar driven band to make really hard, noisy music. And hard edged it is. In some spots it almost reaches such a dissonant sound as to be uncomfortable to listen to. But that was the point of course, staying true to the "Industrial" monicker. However, Puppy's brand of Industrial was so unique that noone has ever really quite sounded like them within the genre, which cannot be said of most other industrial acts, truth be told. Puppy was always Industrial without being overly concerned about making you dance which allowed for a greater level of creativity which set them one step beyond the others.

Don't misunderstand me, I love Industrial as a genre, but Skinny Puppy were really the geniuses of the genre. Too Dark Park is so amazing it's really hard to describe it. Everything works so well on it, creating an amazingly powerful whole. There are real hard edged moments but also softer moments as well, such as the classic "Nature's Revenge" with it's slow rolling creepy pace. Ogre's voice on this track sounds like some vengeful force rising from deep under the surface of the Earth itself. Then there's "Shore Lined Poison" with it's relentless choppy beats that give way to some nice synth riffs and then ultimately end in some great jarring noisy samples and Ogre's tortured screaming (which he does better than anyone else). But really, every track here is great and this is a MUST have for anyone who wants to hear true industrial, the way it was meant to be: creative, disturbing, beautiful in a terryfing dark way. This is one of those releases that justified industrial being called a "movement" as opposed to just a label or category. This is music that truly is art.

Too Dark Park is Skinny Puppy's most avantgard release and it came as a respond to industrial music becoming popular and adaptinga more "easy listening" approach and was in total contrast to their more standard rock release Rabies. This is a massive attack of layered sounds, distorted guitar riffs and vocals that have been masively altered with vocoders and other electronic treatments. This is a far cry for their basic first releases (bites & remission) and it shows them dabbling with equipement that they could dream of in the early days. The book-let is quite nice and it has a very strange art that could be said to look like medieval pictures of hell with evil beasts and and the worm on the back looks like a fiend from hell. This is a very different album and the most challenging Skinny Puppy release up to this point.

One wonders how a band could control noise chaos so well.

This album seems to probe insanity as well as any of SP's albums do, in it Orge screams distoredly though the mix with nothing like a melody for the most part, instead it seems almost like distorted evil sounding poetry, amazing.

This album is the album that changed my musical direction completeley, yes it is that amazing to hear, expecialy if you have really never heard any "industrial" music.

I have heard that this album isn't suggested for new people first coming to industrial, that bs I think, this album is much better than anything Ministry made and seems to me to be more of what I think industrial is.

In it the listener hears samples made into mere background noise, everything is about textures, even the vocals. The depth of sound it something so amazing that I could listen to this over and over again and hear something different in it, I highly suggest this for first time SP listeners or any one who wants to hear really good music.

This is simply one of the favorites among a decent portion of SP fans,along with Last Rights and VIVIsectVI, including myself... A great place to start for new blood to cEvin & Ogre's works.

This is the album that first got me into Skinny Puppy almost 10 years ago, and now that I've got it back in my hands again, I listen to it religiously. Too Dark Park could very likely be not only the best Skinny Puppy album, but the best album in the history of industrial music. The flow of the music is almost like a disease corrupting tissue cells, the ambience surrounding and choking at times... especially in the fearful voices of Nature's Revenge and in Shore Lined Poison, where the alarms and Ogre's screams create a sound of absolute torture. Then, of course, there is Spasmolytic... play this track in your car really loud and watch the pedestrians cringe. SP has never been for those lacking intestinal fortitude, and this especially rings true with TDP. For the true industrial fan: Crank this up with pride and scare the wannabe's!