Pig – Wrecked [1996; XEO Invitation]

With industrial beats, skittering synth arpeggios, bellowing baritone vocals, and fistfuls of samples, Pig’s fifth album mixes new tracks with remixes of older material, bringing them together in a fast-moving release of mocking misery. Track names like “Strength Thru Submission” run directly into more vulgar fare (e.g., “Find It Fuck It Forget It (Regret It mix)”) with middle-ground found in sexual quipping (”No One Gets Out of Her Alive”, “Silt”, “Fuck Me I’m Sick”). Thoughtful composition of the tracks leads to interesting breaks of low-mixed percussion against nasty sample selection, while more standard electric guitar loops tend to provide the body for most of the songs.

Dives into harping on a chorus for extended stretches come up a bit too frequently, but the fitting together of the vocal cadence with the rhythms surrounding them goes a long way in reducing the annoyance of that tendency, as does the insertion of female vocals as a counter-point to the growling. While the lyrics hint at erudition, they usually seem content to go with broad sweeps and buzzwords, which can be disappointing when matched against the careful arrangement of the electronic components. Despite regularly turning in impressive work in the moment-to-moment action, the album as a whole feels a somewhat aimless, with the sprinkling in of remixes not doing much to repeal that impression.

Jason X, a.k.a., Jason X: Friday the 13th, a.k.a., Jason 10 (2001)

Skinny Puppy – Last Rights [1992; Capitol Records, Nettwerk, Nettwerk Europe, Play It Again Sam]

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.