OHGR
SUNNYPSYOP
SPITFIRE

LINKS:
spitfirerecords.com

Ever enjoy listening to an album so much that when someone asks you to describe it, you are unable due to your brain atrophying and your I.Q. falling to thus far unprecedented depths, leaving you only with the ability to babble incoherently? This is what Ohgr’s second album Sunnypsyop does.
What you need to know: Ohgr is comprised of several members of the proto industrial/experimental noise band Skinny Puppy, and is in fact fronted by Nivek Ogre, former lead singer of that band. Ohgr takes all the elements that made Skinny Puppy great, the experimental layers of disjointed sound, a strong artistic sense, and lyrics that take a jaunt through insanity and the underbelly and have brought these pieces to the next logical step, making it all coherent.
Sunnypsyop runs ten tracks long and swings between two distinctive extremes. The first is a throwback to early dark wave as evidenced on tracks like “Hilo” and “Jako.” These tracks feature the layered synthesizers and drum machines that help to define dark wave. The second leans more towards the industrial genre in tracks such as “Majik” and “Chemtalk,” which feature the four-four low end that is the staple of industrial music. The disc is well balanced, switching off between these two areas with every other song and flowing pretty seamlessly between thanks in part to the production of Mark Walk. The standout track on the album is “Iovnow,” the closest on the album to what Skinny Puppy was.
Lyrically Sunnsypsyop shows Ogre at his best. On tracks such as “Majik” and “Dog” his vocals have a childlike almost sing-song quality, which evoke images of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale or German expressionist film, and is reflected by the albums cover art, a painting by Camille Rose Garcia featuring sinister classic fairy tale characters that are disturbing to look at. This is a side of humanity that most of us would never acknowledge let alone listen to.
So at this point you’re asking why I should buy this album. The answer is fairly simple. Skinny Puppy was an experiment in the darker side of humanity. Ohgr continues where Skinny Puppy had to eventually end.

----Steve Walker