Murky, discordant, and often agonized, Last Rights would be the last album from Skinny Puppy before the band’s complete disintegration (including the death of member Dwayne Goettel) on 1995′s The Process.  With a focus on intensive layering, the songs tend to be virtual morasses of electronic and instrumental samples, with vocalist Nivek Ogre’s rasping, growling, and groaning (apocryphally under the influence of enough drugs to give him in-studio seizures) worming through the audio.  Between bouts of harsh noise dissolution, the music drifts into more regulated rhythms, semi-discernible lyrics, and clearer sample sources, until the energy clots back up into further bursts.

But for all of the chaos and intentional disjointedness, the songs of the album flow together remarkably well, with the quick turns and disintegrating structures collapsing smoothly (relatively speaking) into each other.  The frequent dives into portions without vocals tend to make it feel more fully-realized, oddly enough, with the final track, “Download” (substituted for the original last track due to sample copyright claims) following that path all the way into a side-band of the same name.  While not as memorable in individual tracks as other albums in the group’s catalog, it does come off as an intensely earnest and effort-packed release, one which gels together with more effectiveness than any of their subsequent LPs.

Here’s the alternate cover art.

Another alternate.

And the reissue cover art.