First of all: Skinny Puppy’s “Last Rights” and Coil's " Love's Secret Domain" are the most progressive electronic music album at the beginning of the 90's one can possibly imagine. If one considers which music at that time was labeled IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), see Warp Records for example, their music appears such as child quark compared with the albums of Skinny Puppy and Coil. Do not understand me the wrong way, I love IDM and WARP, however SP and Coil experimented with multilayered sounds and Samples approximately 6-10 years before such producers such as Autechre or Richard Devine even had the idea to produce highly complex music at all. Regarding “Last Rights” I must say that it’s a surreal monster and a personal soundtrack to an atomic apocalypse: energy-laden, cold, sad, destructive, melancholic, dirty, fast, slow…none of these terms can fully describe the dark atmosphere of "Last Rights". Nevertheless I have personally two associations with two films also developed at the same time which convey a similar dark and hopeless atmosphere: Terminator 2, Alien 3. However “Last Rights” is and remains an indescribable album. Whether it’s the opened „Love In Vein“ (with synths recalling Coil’s “Anal Staircase”), “Killing Game” (where Ogre even dares to make a ballade), the powerful and my personal favourite “Inquisition”, the sad “Riverz Ends” (actually a new enhanced mix of "Rivers" and "Choralone" from the Rabies LP) or the noisy sound collage “Download” (which casts a shadow on Merzbow’s ever same and repetitive “music”)……all tracks do convince. The live drums and samples of cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel are ingenious, the music harmoniously with soft transitions and multilayered, partly hidden sounds. Ogres vocals are at their highest peak with powerful lyrics which were so personal that he decided not to print them in the booklet. Also not mentioned is Martijn de Kleer synth contribution on “Download” recorded without his knowledge during a rehersal to the Last Rights session, additionally underlining the “freestyleness” of the track. Careful listeners will also recognize previously recorded sounds for the “Too Dark Park” album and Tear Garden’s “Last Man To Fly”.The time around “Too Dark Park” and “Last Rights” creates the zenith of SP’s creativity, unfortunately also of their drug abuse, and all of SP’s fans do know where this did lead. Urban legends even tell, that under the sound layers of “Knowhere” a heroin shot by Ogre can be heard. However, the truth is that this album describes mourning, fear, aggression and suppressed feelings in such a good way that I would not recommend it to listeners which suffer from depression or a had a really bad time.In contrast to this and talking about sadness or disappointment, all owners of the first original us pressing of the CD will be angry as hell because the track-index was set at the wrong places and that means that every song starts with a 30 seconds delay.Technically not imperfect but artistically very much, is the omission of the 10th track which is also mentioned in the booklet. It’s called “Left Handshake” and contains speech samples of Dr. Timothy Leary which lead to licensing and copyright problems leading to finally to the fact that the song was not pressed on the final album. Fortunately it was later released on a limited to 1000 pieces cd single called “Track 10” on the Doomsday Festival live in Dresden in the year 2000. The german and european versions of the “Back & Forth Vol. 3 & 4“ compilation also do contain it, especially the one with the cat# SPV 085-22402 DCD. Demo’s and different versions of this tracks are also floating on the internet. Oh and don’t forget to listen to the B-Side to “Inquisition” called “LaHuman8” from the same sessions.All in one a great album showing that Skinny Puppy don’t fit in any musical cliché, especially regarding the various “black scenes” (and I don’t mean the afro-american ones ;) ). A true germ which took (imho) the original experimentalism of classic industrial music to new and interesting and maybe more accessible grounds, remaining haunting, creative and honest.

your review is very fair to skinny puppies productions etc - though Last RIghts is clearly not my favourite - but i think its unfair of you to be putting Warp releases of the time in the same bucket, as you yourself know you are talking about completely different musical genres - essentially the IDM type stuff that had come out by then (wasnt even labeled IDM at the time, the term had been coined, but it was still very much emerging) - but essentially i dont think its about the amount of layering involved, as essentially the vibe each artist is trying to achieve is the sound of their own scene - neither black dog, nor B12 for example ever had the intention to make music sounding anything like SP as the crowd going for that sound was clearly not into SP not anyother industrial / ebm sound of the epoque - so what you are saying is super clear, and makes perfect sense, but i dont think its fair to any artist on Warp or anyone that produced alternative sounds for the IDM/ambient/ nor any of the other scenes since then / sure layering has become more elaborate again with scenes like Glitch etc - also its worth noting that a lot of the layering in Skinny Puppy's productions also has to do with the sometimes chaotic / distorted sounds they were trying to achieve - essentially sounds purely associated with Industrial music. just my take on this - a hardcode SP fan, turned techno, house, idm, ambient, triphop lover, though now i nearly only ever listen to 70's soul ;) progressions progressions :P

As far as progressive, I'd throw in Cyberaktif's - Tenebrae Vision as well. Great review!!!