Skinny Puppy’s latest effort following their much hyped reunion sounds surprisingly less dense, still heavy but this time more “musical” elements permeate the sound of the band. Not to say that the garbled vocals and trippy clicking percussion are missing, they are definitely there, but they are reshaped in a much grander way, like on “Haze” (3). This is a welcome change for me because I always felt that when Skinny Puppy opened up their sound a bit their frightening soundscapes created some bizarrely beautiful tracks. Some examples of the combination of the heavy industrial and the sound sculpting include “Ambiantz” (9) which features an almost classical sounding keyboard, “Jaher” (5) where a spare Spanish guitar melody drives the song and “Pasturn” (8) which drops its percussion towards the end to ascend into some dreamlike synths. The experiments are compelling listening, but like with any experiment what you get in the end isn’t always what you were going for. There are some missteps on the album that just sound cheesy, grating, or just gross. I’m not talking about typical Skinny Puppy lyrics about death, decay and drug use, I’m talking about when Nivek Ogre just says something that you just don’t want to hear, like in “Magnifishit” (1) when he makes references to how your mother urinates, or “Ugli”(10) where he repeats “Jesus wants to be ugly” over and over and over. It’s just uncalled for. It makes songs that otherwise would be entertaining to listen to thoroughly cringe-able. It’s not the religious content or gross content that I’m objecting to; I just don’t understand what the point is behind it. Luckily, there aren’t many moments like that on the album. Overall “Mythmaker” is stripped down back to basics Skinny Puppy, which reveals that even after over 20 years, the death of a core member, and “kicking the habit” that they are still the premier innovators of Industrial music.
