10 essential albums from the outer reaches of Skinny Puppy’s universe

• Emilie Elizabeth and John Kraw

When Skinny Puppy takes the stage at the Buckhead Theatre on Sat., Dec. 6, the group will close out a night filled with performances by industrial music’s elder statesmen and young innovators alike, following sets by Youth Code, Haujobb, and Front Line Assembly. Since founding the group in 1982, Skinny Puppy’s core members Nivek Ogre and cEvin Key have carved out a dark legacy as a cornerstone of modern industrial music. From the ghostly menace of Remission (1984) to the harsh electronic torment of Too Dark Park (1990) and Last Rights (1992) to the digital tension of recent albums Mythmaker (2007) and The Weapon (2013), Ogre and Key have perpetually stood on the experimental edge of a sound that Skinny Puppy helped define. For three decades Skinny Puppy has continually refined the musical terrain it covers, all the while staying busy crafting music with numerous solo and side projects. The following is a primer that looks at 10 of Key and Ogre’s other essential offerings culled from the dark matter of Skinny Puppy’s ever-expanding universe.

Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Haujobb, and Youth Code play the Buckhead Theatre Sat., Dec. 6. $40.15. 7 p.m. 3110 Roswell Road. 404-843-2825. www.thebuckheadtheatre.com.

Cyberaktif: Tenebrae Vision. Wilhelm Schroeder aka Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly, cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel (R.I.P.) join forces for a subtle but driving collection of sparse and slowly burning terror-beat attacks. Released in 1991, history has proven Tenebrae Vision to be a sleeper album that’s more akin to FLA’s classic EBM plod. Still, songs such as “Paradiessiets” (featuring Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten) and “Nothing Stays” are among the most memorable songs the Canadian industrial camp has turned out.

Hilt: Journey to the Center of the Bowl. This one could make the list based on the title alone! … the Bowl arrived in 1991, a few years after Hilt’s seminal 1989 LP Call the Ambulance Before I Hurt Myself piqued the ears of SP fans with a more adventurous palate. Here Key, Goettel, and Dave “Rave” Ogilvie, join Alan Nelson, Ryan Moore, and a handful of others for a swan dive into an expansive and psychedelic rock groove. Irresistible hooks plow through a collage of sensory jamming samples-as-textures. This is truly experimental rock that begs comparisons to Wish You Were Here/Animals-era Pink Floyd. However, this one is a close cousin to the dark majesty of the Tear Garden’s Last Man to Fly and the Legendary Pink Dots’ 9 Lives to Wonder.

Rx: Bedside Toxicology A 1998 collaboration between Ogre and Martin Atkins (Pigface, Pil, Killing Joke), Bedside Toxicology kicks off with a disarming rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Scarecrow.” This was one of Ogre first offerings following Skinny Puppy’s 1995 break up and Dwayne Goettel’s death from an apparent drug overdose. It’s an empowering electronic rock excursion driven by big, washing machine beats. The cover of Pet Clark’s “Downtown” re-imagines the notion of what downtown really means for most cities, and it ain’t a place where you can forget all your troubles.

Pigface: Gub. This one’s an essential listen for ears that appreciate good abrasive music in general. Featuring guest appearances by everyone from Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails to David Yow of the Jesus Lizard, Gub is a magnificent anomaly. Steve Albini’s production makes this a noisy masterpiece, and Ogre’s blown-speaker shriek on “Tapeworm” is the stuff of nightmares.

__Puppy Gristle. Originally released in 2002 as a part of cEvin Key’s “From the Vault” subscription series, Puppy Gristle is essentially an early ’90s improv session that finds the Skinny Puppy crew holed up with Chris Carter and Genesis P. Orridge of Throbbing Gristle/Psychic T.V., along with a few other folks. It’s a powerful blast of spontaneous noise, mutant beats, and drawn-out, tweaked-out psychological meltdowns. This one is not meant for the dance floor, and it’s certainly not faint of heart. But as the 40-minute session unfolds, a dark magic emerges from deep within the sonic fissures and distorted filigree and shadow. Bits of this were repurposed for a couple of Psychic TV and Download CDs, but this releases is the source of it all.

Download: III. It’s difficult calling out one Download album as the group’s quintessential release — each one carves out a particularly strong swathe of chaotic aural dissonance. In the beginning 1995’s Furnace laid out a bold experimental path for the group, and is still one of Download’s greatest offerings. Later albums such as Charlie’s Family (1996) and The Eyes of Stanley Pain (’96) are absolutely impenetrable as they challenge the notions of what noise, dub, and industrial music are and what they can be. But ultimately III reaches a summit by building upon everything the group achieved while downshifting to embrace subtle touches of mid ’90s electronica and a highly evolved sense of its own sound and vision.

OhGr: Welt. For years it seemed as though Welt would never see the light of day. The original Rick Rubin-recorded album was lost in the shuffle of label woes from 1995 till 2001 when it was finally released. The album arrived as Ogre’s most addictive round of ur-pop songs to date. Industrial by design, the album stands far apart from the clichés of the four-on-the-floor industrial rock that was beyond maximum saturation post Y2K. There’s a staccato motion that ties the album together, reaching full-throttle artistic highs with “Devil,” “Lusid,” and “Pore.”

Doubting Thomas: The Infidel. When Key and Goettel released The Infidel in 1991, the album’s cinematic qualities and drawn-out moments of dreamlike beauty were endlessly engrossing. Twenty-three years later, it’s clear to see that Key and Goettel anticipated generations of Warp Records artists, Boards of Canada, Mouse On Mars, and the likes, creating entire genres based on this sort of instrumental electronic venture. An intangible sense of danger and urgency is hiding behind the sparse beats, synthetic bass washes, and samples of sounds from films that are both familiar (Aliens, Evil Dead pt. 2, THX 1138) and strange. The Infidel is bleak, beautiful, and one of a kind.

The Tear Garden: Tired Eyes Slowly Burning. Key, Goettel, and Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink seemed like an unlikely pairing at first. But Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, and it’s companion Center Bullet EP strike a perfect balance between dark and ethereal post-industrial soundscapes and the lingering imagery of Ka-Spel’s voice and lyrics. “Room With A View,” “You and me and Rainbows,” and “Ophelia” are sweeping hints at the greatness this budding collaborative effort would later yield.

The Tear Garden: The Last Man To Fly. Of all the Skinny Puppy-related splinter projects, the Tear Garden is the one that matters most. The creative force behind The Last Man to Fly is undeniably Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots. The psychedelic pop design of the album’s arrangements, and the emotional gravitas evoked by songs such as “The Running Man,” “Turn Me On, Dead Man,” and “Romulus and Venus” falling back-to-back-to-back is unparalleled. These songs bear a closer resemblance to the Legendary Pink Dots’ sound than anything else. After all the Silver Man, Ryan Moore, David Ogilvie, Martinj de Kleer, and Dr. Green Guy, most of whom are from a particularly strong era of the LPD’s output, are all here joining the group’s core members: Key, Goettel, and Ka-Spel. Together the expanded lineup created an album that is unlike anything that any of them have created before or since, and it is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. Albums that are as powerfully moving as The Last Man to Fly come along only so often in life.__