Rabies (album)
Rabies is a 1989 album by Canadian industrial group Skinny Puppy. It was released on CD, cassette, and LP by Nettwerk Records in Canada, licensed for release on the same formats to Capitol Records in the United States, and released on CD only by Nettwerk in Europe.
The album is significant in the band's history for a number of reasons; not as much for the music, but for the events in and out of the studio involving the band members. Most of their previous albums had been mixed and produced by the group's "fourth member" Dave Ogilvie, also known as "The Rave". For Rabies, lead singer/songwriter Nivek Ogre brought in friend and Ministry frontman, Al "Alien" Jourgenson. Jourgenson and Ogre had toured together with industrial supergroup Pigface, as well as with Ministry (Ogre can be seen and heard on the In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up video and CD). The other two members of Skinny Puppy, drummer/programmer cEvin Key and keyboardist/programmer Dwayne Goettel did not approve of Jourgenson's takeover, creating friction between the band members.
Track listing
- Rodent
- Hexonxonx
- Two Time Grime (incorrectly listed as "Two Time Crime" on some releases)
- Fascist Jock Itch
- Worlock
- Rain
- Tin Omen
- Rivers
- Chloralone
- Amputate
- Spahn Dirge (Live)
"Amputate" and "Spahn Dirge" are CD-only bonus tracks.
Additional information
The album has often been maligned by fans as the band's worst album. This is probably a result of the combination of the album's more guitar-heavy sound, and the poor mastering of the original release (see below). Regardless, the album contains a few songs that are regarded as classics, notably the two singles "Tin Omen" (interestingly the most guitar-heavy song) and "Worlock".
The original CD release on Nettwerk (and the licensed version on Capitol) was poorly mastered, with a muffled sound. In 1993, at the insistence of cEvin Key, the album was digitally remastered and re-released on Nettwerk. Besides the dramatically improved sound quality, the remastered version can be distinguished by the position of the track marker between "Choralone" and "Amputate" -- in the original release, at the end of "Choralone" there was the sound of a thunderclap. In the remastered version, this sound is at the beginning of "Amputate" instead.
Only one promotional video was produced for Rabies. The "Worlock" video was made up of graphic "gross-out" clips from horror movies (such as Bad Taste), as well as clips and outtakes from the band's earlier video, Stairs And Flowers (from the album Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse). The video was never released due to copyright problems, since all the movie footage was used without permission. It has been widely bootlegged among fans, especially with the advent of the Internet.
