Trent Reznor gave an interview, that I read on the internet back in middle school, talking about his music. He said something along the lines of, "If my music exposes people to other music, like Skinny Puppy, then that's great." He dropped the names of a couple other bands, but I decided to check out Skinny Puppy because their name sounded somewhat sinister and I liked their little SP logo.

The first Skinny Puppy album I bought was Brap, back before I learned all about researching albums to find out the best place to start, but I was pretty lucky. Within this odd compilation of alternate versions and live takes, there exists a live version of Tin Omen (the studio/album version is posted here, as my MP3 copy of Brap seems to be mislabeled or completely wrong) and I couldn't get enough of it.

Though it was against the rules and I risked getting my CD player taken away from me, I listened to Tin Omen non-stop. In the live version the song starts off quiet and then bursts into high volume somewhat and I loved it, I would rock out in my seventh grade Home Economics class, much to the ire of everyone around me. I was hooked. I was obsessed. I collected all their albums, a bunch of t-shirts, I drew SP logos on my school work.

Part of what amazes me about Skinny Puppy, that I never bothered to pay attention to much when I was younger, was that while Nine Inch Nails songs are all about "me" or "you" or "whatever", Skinny Puppy's songs largely deal with specific topics. Tin Omen is about Tiananmen Square with parallels to the Kent State massacre. They have whole albums dedicated to animal testing (Testure, vivisect vi), and other shit like that (too lazy to find other examples). Not that you'd ever know it underneath the mental patient vocals and shredding guitars (which come courtesy of Ministry's Al Jourgensen on this track) but that's OK.

I was going to write all about this goth chick I was obsessed with in 6th grade, but this song is totally 7th grade to that so I'll write about it some other time.

Bonus story!

In 8th grade, I was sitting at my lunch table listening to music, minding my own business, when this duty aid came up to me and said, "Listening to music is not allowed, give me your CD player!"

To which I said, "I'm at lunch, I don't think I am doing anything wrong?" At which point she grabbed my CD player and tried to pry it out of my hands, but I held fast. "Hey!" I shouted, "You can't just grab my shit like this!" (I swore, even then.)

"You damn kids listening to your Marilyn Manson!" she shouted at me, which just pissed me off further because, at that age (at any age, even now) implying that I am a fan of Marilyn Manson was nothing short of an absolute insult.

I shouted back "You stereotyping bitch! You think just because I dress all in black that I listen to that stupid bullshit?" and yanked my CD player out of her hands.

Of course, I got in trouble, but it was no big deal. I also had the biggest balls ever according to everyone who was around at the time and watched me wrestle with a duty aid.

I was pretty bad ass.