will pain remain the game: part VI

an interview with nivek ogre

What can you tell me about this virtual reality vampire film project?

Oh - The Second Coming? It never happened. John Lambert was involved with some production, but it never got off the ground. But it was really an interesting character. It wasn't so much a vampire - it was a vampire in the sense that the character was a psychic vampire, taking the experience from people. It was kind of - I mean, I haven't seen it, but the idea was that this person has a machine that allows anyone to experience their deepest darkest fantasy without any moral or medical set-backs. So you could do whatever you wanted without the chance of getting a disease or anything. It was a virtual reality machine that would basically - it took away more of the person, and left the shell, needing more of the machine, so it created a bunch of virtual reality addicts. And then the twist on the whole thing was that who was chasing me was this group called the Knights Templar...

Yeah, I know who they are....

But in this story, they were the people who ran all the prostitution and gambling and all the vice in the city of San Francisco. So they were after me because obviously I started taking away from a lot of their trade, because these people no longer needed prostitutes or drugs or certain things. So they were after me. And the whole idea is conceived by an eight-year old girl.

With a vivid imagination. Getting on to the future - when will WELT tour?

WELT is going to tour in the fall. Spend time getting strength, getting agile.

Meaning?

Meaning feeling like my neck's not going to fall off my head.

And why does your neck feel like it's going to fall off your head?

'Cause I got injured a long time ago. Many injuries - from Skinny Puppy and from high school. Someone landed on my head.

Someone LANDED on your head? When was this?

When I was 16 years old.

Like a whole person landed on your head?

A big, 230 lb. person. I thought I'd broke my neck. I had to go in for CAT Scans because the calcium that was growing from the injury - they weren't sure if it was growing towards the nerve or away from the nerve.

Do you have pain from that?

Yeah. To a certain degree. But I mean, I always like to see chiropractors. It's sort of stabilized now. I was in an accident up in Seattle, and that didn't help, but now it's stabilizing again. It's something that'll always be with me.

So your head comes out of joint.

My head comes out of joint all the time!

That's a trip. Well, I've gotten a lot of inquiries about your tattoos, so you have to tell me what they are.

I have a Process power sign, I have a Skinny Puppy tattoo, a tapeworm tattoo, I've got a RevCo tattoo, I've got an upside-down dog on my back, it's like an Aztec dog that was drawn for one of our t-shirts a long time ago, I have a Celtic dog with a kind of a snake-like figure, and the Celtic dog's been changed from a Celtic dog to a really mutated, sort of twisted-faced dog, with a little bandage on its tail. And then I have something off the Too Dark Park cover - the only color tattoo I have is from my wrist up to my elbow on the inside soft part of my arm. There's almost like a huge cut on my arm, drawn out, with the worm from the Too Dark Park cover. And that's it.

Okay. Well now it's on record and if you get any more you'll have to notify me.

I'll keep you updated.

Another question from readers: Did you send the post that read "Skinny PUPPY (I MEAN WHO WOULD CALL A BAND THAT ANYWAYS... laugh)"?

Yeah, I did post that. But that was a just a joke.

Many wondered if it was a fake post.

Why - because I was inserting some humor?

Because they didn't get the humor or expect YOU to be humorous.

I know.

Is WELT more commercial?

WELT has more song structure to it. WELT is less of - what I didn't like a lot of times with Skinny Puppy - it was a little too self-masturbatory a bit, in a lot of ways. To the point that because it was Skinny Puppy we could do something like this. It became, in a way, a knife in its own back, in the sense that well, we could do anything, it doesn't matter if it's good, it still is Skinny Puppy, people will listen to it.

So you think you'd reached that point?

Not really reached that point - I think it was always there and it was a hit or miss thing, but it became more miss sometimes to me than hit, on a lot of occasions, and I think that time should have been spent on something else as opposed to these long soundscapes that sometimes went nowhere. And that's in my own personal opinion. That has nothing to do with how people would perceive it, because again, when people perceive it with rose-colored glasses saying, "Oh - it's Skinny Puppy." So... Is WELT more commercial? I don't know. I don't know what the boundaries of commercial music are. Was Skinny Puppy any less commercial? Yes, it didn't sell over 100,000 copies per record.

What was your compositional process for WELT?

We wrote a lot of songs on guitar, and then got vocals going, and then with those ideas, we went into a digital environment, and totally mutated things and then built things around that. But there's a stronger sense of structure. So, the question of being commercial is a really difficult question. To me, it's really interesting music and it's really fresh and it's quite a bit different from Skinny Puppy and yet there's certain trademark elements that I brought from Skinny Puppy that will be apparent to people who listen to this record. There is again, a strong emphasis on songs than perhaps you would find on a Skinny Puppy record. If that makes it any more commercial, then that's up to you.

I don't think so. That's not what makes it more commercial for me. I don't think the secret's in the structure, but that's my own thing.

Well, that's how I feel, too. But a lot of people within the genre will say, "There's a chorus, there's a bridge, and there's a verse."

That's not necessarily what would make it more commercial.

What makes it more commercial?

It's a certain magical crossover element, where it appeals to a lot more people.

Is that planned?

No, it's not usually planned.

Again, you ask me this question - so how can I know?

I don't know how you can know. You can send me a copy and I'll tell you.

I promise I'll send you a copy. Again, that word "commercial" makes me cringe in a lot of ways because it has all these attachments to it that have no relevance to the actual music itself. As you said, it only becomes commercial once it crosses that fine line, that natural line of acceptance by a massive group of people. And that's just something that can't be formulated. So what's your kid's favorite Skinny Puppy song?

It's from Last Rights - "Lust Chance".

Oh? She likes "Lust Chance" - a little porno-princess?

Well, (laughing) she sings along with that woman if that's what you mean.

(laughing very hard) That's hilarious!

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