Litany: Music News Covering Skinny Puppy, Download, ohGr and Related Projects

International readers as well as those who want to purchase Weapon digitally in lossless format can now pre-order the digital album from Metropolis Records Bandcamp.

Pre-orders of the CD and spectacularly gorgeous vinyl edition have already begun shipping, so keep your eye on your mailbox for the album to hit shortly.

With Download's new album, LingAM, just weeks away, here's a full-length track available for preview, Yoni.

Listen to it here.

Chaos Control features another interview with Ogre.

Here's a clip where he reflects upon Smothered Hope:::

...because I can still go back to Smothered Hope, when I was young, I sang "Withered rope you hang what's empty can't remain to put it simply in time cry the hollow words to sing with false disguise" and I would always think to myself "Am I too young to sing this? Is this a song I'd be singing when I'm older?" And now when I sing this song, it still resonates with me in the same way as when I was young and I thought I was writing a song that was too old for me at that time.

Read the whole thing here.

Regen Magazine has posted a brand new, in-depth interview with Ogre covering everything from the social issues surrounding Weapon to record label woes.

Here's a clip about the revamped Solvent:::

We had the idea of going back and rerecording all of Remission. We may totally look at something like that in the future, but we thought that it might be a little cheesy, so we thought we'd experiment with one of the songs. Solvent was the choice just because it was never fully realized when we did it back in 1983. I can't speak for cEvin, and musically, it's pretty good actually. From my perspective and thinking about my earlier singing, because I wasn't a great singer back then, I didn't have the range I do now, I didn't think I did the song justice. I'm sure the vulnerability and the fragility in the voice is what gives it its magic too. We were experimenting with the idea of redoing songs, and whatever the feedback from how people feel about that will determine how to move forward with that.

Read the whole thing here.

Revolver Mag has just posted the complete Weapon album for your streaming listening delight.

Listen here.

Vice Magazine features a brand new interview with Ogre about Weapon. Here's a clip:::

I recently came to this weird gestalt in my mind that everything we do has the potential to either harm or cause good. This is a choice we all make with every action. But I view the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species. Guns are a tiny element of a much larger iceberg that's latticed throughout history.

Read the whole thing here.

Rolling Stone has saLvo, off of the upcoming Weapon, available for download for free today. Get it right here.

Skinny Puppy - Paragun

It's my great honor and privilege to offer everyone in Litany land their first taste of Skinny Puppy's forth-coming album, Weapon.

Enjoy, share, and discuss this very special, exclusive preview of the full-length release landing on May 28th:::



Those who can't see the iframe, click here.

cEvin Key sent in this from Japan:::

The cherry blossoms bloom at the beginning of the new season. A beautiful thing to see in Japan especially in the Kansai regions of Kyoto and Osaka. cEvin Key and DJOTO will join with Osaka local Uterozzzaaa to play 2 shows KYOTO April 5th and OSAKA April 7th to celebrate!

Check them out on SoundCloud:::
Uterozzzaaa
Djoto

Ogre will be making a couple of convention appearances in the coming weeks. First up is Mad Monster Party in Charlotte, NC this weekend, March 22nd thru 24th.

Next up is LA's Days of the Dead. Ogre will be appearing there on Saturday April 6th (though the con itself runs all weekend).

In addition to signing Repo! and Devil's Carnival merchandise, Ogre will also have some ohGr merchandise and some vintage Skinny Puppy photos available. If you're in the area of either of these, make sure you drop by for a fantastic time. Check the links above for info on tickets etc.

Download's new album, LingAM, is now set for release via Metropolis Records on June 11th. Marking Download's tenth full-length release and cEvin and Phil Western's nineteenth year of collaboration, the album features artwork by Allen Jaeger and Simon Paul.

Pre-order it here.

The new issue of Diabolique Magazine features a brand new, exclusive interview with Ogre, including some images shared from his personal collection. Also featured is the artwork of Jim "I, Braineater" Cummins (Too Dark Park, Last Rights).

The magazine is available at Barnes and Noble and as a digital download Click here for more info.

Skinny Puppy's upcoming album, Weapon, is now available for preorder on CD and limited edition 180g vinyl from Metropolis records for release on May 28th.

See the tracklisting and press info below, including a familiar song title:::

This stunning new album stands as a commentary on that which it is named after, the Weapon, or more specifically, to the concurrent glorification of the gun culture and simultaneous horror at the devastation the gun can cause. Given this view, the pop undertones of the albums opening wornin' and the compelling counterpoint of the vocals and lyrics seem to reflect our mass media homogenization of an instrument of death into an entertainment centerpiece. illisiT could then be focusing on the authoritarian control applied to us under the guise of protecting us from the criminal element. Though possibly it is from the view of the average citizen, arming themselves against the threat of each other. The more it is analyzed, the more it could be pondered on varying levels. Perhaps the classic Skinny Puppy sounds evident in the song solvent are a nod to not only the past, but to a bleak Orwellian future, cycle of the weapon leads only to power in the hands of those who have no fear of using it. Are we facing a 1984 dystopia filtered through a Kafkaesque lens? A world where the illusion of power given to the private citizen afforded ownership of a weapon distracts them from the Big Brother drones that watch overhead?

Parallels could certainly be drawn from our own society to a track like tsudanama, where the ever building menace of the mechanized rhythms crashes over the listener in waves as the vocals at times seem to take the tone of the voice of protest, standing against the inevitable tide of the dystopian path of progress. Then does plasiCage implore the listener to take up the fight against a gun worship culture and the spiraling towards oligarchy? Or are the mournful tones terminal a funeral dirge for our society?

Could the weapon be the gun, or the one who wields it? Is it in creating an arms race among the populace, or does it lie in the resulting authoritarian control given to those who are charged with protecting us from ourselves? Is it the power to profit from the cycle? Is it the singular act of speaking against the conditioning of our thoughts and actions?

01. wornin'
02. illisiT
03. saLvo
04. gLowbeL
05. solvent
06. paragUn
07. survivalisto
08. tsudanama
09. plastiCage
10. terminal

Click here to pre-order on CD or here for limited edition vinyl.