The Puppy

So I went to see the greatest industrial band of all time on Saturday night.
Skinny Puppy, that is.

Goddamn they were fucking amazing. For the entire first song ("Downsizer" from their latest album The Greater Wrong of the Right), OhGr wasn’t even on-stage. Having never seen the dude in person, I assumed he was hiding somewhere on the stage. But, there was a mic stand in the center of the stage, with no singer. Still, he sang from backstage. He finally came out for the next song ("Immortal", also from their new album) in this weird white almost-KKK-like outfit. The hood had 4 points on it, like demonic bunny ears or something, that flopped to the side and then there was this huge spear-like "nose" on it. He wore this thick white coat, with this strain of simulated blood and gore ripping out of the center of it, from top to bottom.

Throughout the next 4-5 songs, he removed various parts of his outfit. From tearing the hood off of his head, to then his shades that he was wearing, then ripping his coat-like shirt in two, then he tore off his bandana… it was insane how many parts he had to his costume. They never did shine a direct light on him, so he was always cloaked in darkness - lit up from the huge video screen (and 4 TVs below it) behind him. The screen was doing live video effects of the video feed running off the camera on-stage, occasionally switching to videos of war, suffering, hunger, pain, death and a million other disturbing things I can barely describe. It almost reminded me of a Gwar show at times, like when OhGr pulled out this blood-squirting gun and shot blood all over himself and the crowd. Then, when the gigantic video screen showed a slow-moving shot of G.W. Bush saluting soldiers, OhGr turned towards the screen and simulated shooting him w/the gun. That’s some ballsy shit. But then, the Puppy are Canadian, so I guess they’re not too concerned.

I was also amazed that they reproduced, with perfection, all of their songs on-stage with little or no DAT usage. They had their live drummer (with an insane kit, it was just massive in size and complexity), a guitarist with a plethora of guitars (including one of those 2-necked guitars, which he played most of the time), their keyboardist (cEvin Key) had enough fuckin’ electronics around him to start his own Mars Music shop. I grabbed a quick video of the last 30 seconds or so of "Hardset Head". Had I known this video was going to turn out so well, I’d have grabbed a lot more footage.

Anyway, here it is for your enjoyment.
If you get a chance to check out the Puppy - you should. The only thing I would’ve asked for differently is that during the encore they’d have played Killing Game.

NOW CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

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