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TORONTO 1992:

(Continued from 1988 Cambridge review...) A few years later i found myself at the Last Rites concert in Toronto during a very warm september which made the Concert Hall a oven, it seems the ventalation system died that night. Godflesh were to be the opening act but unfortunatly were denided working visas for Canada, supposedly. So some industrial band whose name i don't remember played instead. There was a great deal of delay between acts and most of the crowd was restless to the point of crowd surfing spontaineously to pass the time. When the pup's took the stage it was a relief to all since the heat was becoming unbearable. After spending most of the show up on the balcony boiling up i decided to go down on the floor and watch the show from there, i remember people trying to stop me from going downstairs saying the crowd was dangerous and i would get hurt if i wasn't carefull !!!! not the case, i remember being in the middle of the crowd surrouded by many smiling people really enjoying themselves dancing and surfing the crowd....not the best show except for one song which stopped the crowd in their tracks: left hand shake.....it began with the entire hall going pitch black and the main screen showing a fetus glowing bright yellow floating in the womb as tim leary's voice cooed his message....there was no music untill the message as almost done then the drums kicked in and the noise drowned out everything, a low pitch which shook absolutly eveything. just amazing. Another little thing which i fondly remember was Ogre nearly wiping out on the fake blood,( which had pooled in the middle the stage), during a song and afterwards getting a towel to clean it up, just imagine Ogre on hands and knees wiping up blood off the stage manicly chanting "clean clean clean clean clean clean", the crowd just loved it..... two encores: the last one being a very drawn out version of assimilate with Ogre forgetting half the words! very strange.....he even apologised for it! um that all i can remember.... oh wait, there was a lot of cheap acid being passed out at the last rites concert.....which as you can guess made for some high weirdness in the crowd (another long story in itself.....) well i hope the explinations aren't too round about or boring and riddled with too many spelling mistakes..
all the best, neboysha

CHICAGO 1992:

typed up by "alieneye" from the Litany.net forum:
Skinny Puppy
The Vic, Chicago Ill
The Troc, Philadelphia, Pa
live show review by Sandra Garcia
from B-Side Magazine Spring '92

As much as i am fascinated with what this band does live, i've never seen them twice on one tour. It's either been cancellations, timing... but this was finally the tour. And this may be the tour for Puppy. Then again, I've been saying that for years. With this tour to accompany the chilling Last Rights, Puppy once again managed to surpass even themselves. They've reached even deeper inside and brought out real monsters and demons and actually injected (bad word choice) some... hope into the horror. That's fairly radical itself for this band. You always walk out of Skinny Puppy not going 'yeah, what a fun show, i had a great time.' Well you might if you're sick or totally insensitive. Their not like a horror movie where you laugh just to relieve the tension. If anything, you stagger out of a Puppy show exhausted, not only from the audience, but from the exquisite tension. There's no wonder they're fascinated with car crashes... a Puppy show's not unlike watching a car race: there's always the strained feeling that something could go drastically out of control both musically and physically at any second. The Cleanse tour was a bizarre extravaganza, the Vivisect tour followed man into the torture into the victimized animal: the Rabies tour you had to have hallucinated as it never went down, the Too Dark Park tour was the victimization of the world as it affected man, and now the Last Rights tour takes the audience even deeper into Ogre's psyche then before, offering more festering mental reality then you'd ever want to explore, let alone actually experience. And the wild conclusion left you actually feeling poignantly sad... are we dealing with rebirth here? A renewal? Fascinating. Intriguing. the faithful experienced Tim Gore's masterful special effects and castings, he exploring new stage ground with his bizarre maypole and his Virtual reality helmet. Ogre's new control of the stage proved this tour he's aware of what he's doing instead of abusing himself to the point of injury. And he's more frightening for the control: these are not the moves of a damaged mind. Dwayne Goettel and Cevin Key were annoyingly invisible due to the stage set up, but their amazing sounds definitely sucked the air out of the theaters both accessions, especially during the frenzy of 'Knowhere.' All I kept thinking was at Puppy no one can hear you scream. They know their levels and their perimeters and once established they totally shatter them and drive the bits into the audience. Once again Cevin hammered out live percussion, and when you could get a glimpse at him he was often flailing away with both arms and legs. Their low levels made the structure tremble: their highs probably had a few puppies in the are very excited. Into this Last Rights session they worked in older numbers like 'Second Tooth,' 'VX Gas Attack.' 'Addiction. 'Harsh Stone White,' and 'Worlock.' They crafted them to make sure they fit with the new material: it wasn't like you heard them as the songs they were. You heard them as the songs they are now. Puppy's always used video imagery but with this tour the imagery has a decided bizarre elegance, less factual and more haunting. the fact that Ogre is the subject matter of the videos lashes the imagery tightly to the music. For every sorry critic that applauds U2's use of video I'll point to these guys. This is viciously personal use of video at its finest. And after the departure of Guilt Man (Tim Gore's going to be a household name after this tour) the superb encore of 'Testure' chillingly cauterized the nerve endings the scraped raw earlier. You wanted to grab the first researcher you saw and make them meet the Guilt Man. Some take it as splatter, certain audience members claiming there weren't enough grisly goodies and they couldn't wait for Gwar. Take it as the carve to hammer into a few hundred bodies to get out your own demons. Take it as performance art of a high level. Whatever it was, Skinny Puppy manage to blend it all together and make it work on both a cerebral and a visceral level. You never could classify them as mere music: you'd be a bigger fool not to take them seriously. I get accused of taking them too seriously but that's my privilege. Art is a personal thing. Of you missed this tour, they'll be back in the fall. so unless you want the Guilt Man at your door make plans now Any questions?