Skinny Puppy Howling at Your Door

Feeling apocalyptic lately? If the movie of your life is a dimly lit soundstage of pain, anger and alienation, then Skinny Puppy's Last Rights is the soundtrack you've been looking for. It is harrowing.

Marvelously harrowing. Last Rights has the voyeuristic magnetism of a horror film. You know it'll deliver a backhanded slap of terror, violence and shock, but you can't help looking. The album's first planned video, "Killing Game," culminates in two alien characters--whose veins are on the outside of their bodies and whose eyes are sewn shut--ripping each other's eyes open.

You don't listen to this music--you confront it. The synthetic noise-scape is a mine field which explodes, throwing out sharp pieces of musical shrapnel accompanied by lyrics that evoke a vision of industrial Hell. "Deserted digging through/Splinters from cracking boards/Caught upon fingers dancing in darkness/Pain shoots smack down any hole."

Last Rights is a wrenching electronic cry of rage and personal disintegration, as tempting and raw as a hangnail. You will flinch. . .but that's the point.