There is, though, a tension in the music and lyrics that you could see as a parallel to the antics of The Process Church, which is to say shock and mystery - purple-lined cloaks, Satan’s Cavern Cafe, a theatrical Black Mass. Early era industrial and performance artists would have loved the scenery. Horror movie showings, dark-cloaked rituals, handsome tall men with little goatees. Robert De Grimston. Black on Black.
Primarily through their magazine, The Process Church revelled in shock and counterculture philosophical investigations of what were, at the time, budding changes to psychology and philosophy. They were primarily concerned with the idea of there being different assets inside of all of us, to which we have to take responsibility. Some people were more aligned with their luciferian tendencies, while others shifted towards Jehovah. This, with the outward message that we must join Christ and Satan to end the world, when seen philosophically instead of religiously, can simply be about exploring transcendence. Not literal, not heavenly, but personal.
From this, we could guess that Ohgr was trying to reflect his own current societal issues and politics, in 1994, in the way that they were in the late 1960s. Subliminal messaging, propaganda, The West Memphis Three.
There has always been a drug-addled, mentally unfit quality to cut-up style writing. Whenever I read it, I both understand and fail to understand its appeal. Skinny Puppy is notorious for using this kind of masked vs. direct meaning in their albums, but through the filter of The Process Church of the Final Judgement, I think the messages are too unstable. Part satire, part self actualization, part judgement, and part shock imagery, the lyrics fail to find a cohesion.
Perhaps the most clear dilation on The Process Church’s method comes from “Amnesia”: “When adding no result / time’s a shallow digging through the mud / thrown out, so expendable / Intentions not up front / and the shit that’s never faced / reflects the sliver of god’s face / and looped / a flaw rotates forever unresolved.” Part self-help wisdom, part religious meaning. Time is expendable. A mistake rotates, looped over and over again in your mind, forever unresolved. These are the kinds of lyrics that, at twelve or thirteen, you can pick and choose from to make a twisted psychology. A corrupt meaning to the antagonism you are already, somehow, fostering for religion and society and death.
At any moment I can recite to you all the lyrics from “Cult,” flawlessly, because I played it so often. There’s something so perfectly sad about the way the song was laid out. Musically, it’s by far the saddest song in Skinny Puppy’s catalog for me. “Killing Game” comes close, of course, but has a different, less personal sadness. A subtle bass-heavy piano plays under the verse and a rising, momentary clip of violins boost the lyrics into a space of core emotion. By the climax, the intense emotional vulnerability comes to a head in many voices: “crescent moon, I’m cutting through,” one voice says while another yells “she’s the one I live for. I live alone. I live alone.” And no matter where I am, I feel it. “Burns inside, horribly. She lifts me to the spirit burns, the darkest hours. My corrupt brain is hurting. Once again, the door lies quiet. Left alone, I’m thinking of her. Sitting the burning clock of time.”
Then, I start the track over.
It so clearly spoke to me when I was thirteen, that now, at thirty-two I’m still whispering it quietly to myself whenever I know I’m about to go into a sad period. When depression is at the door, “Cult” is there to smother myself with; and that’s comforting. It brings to surface that hurt teenage hopeless romantic that lives problematically inside of me, still. Much like Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt,” I believe this track is an all-time bummer. But it’s not alone on the album. “Amnesia,” which comes later and is much more energetic, shares this certain painstaking sadness. Buried in the looped scale and the deeply dynamic bass line, is a classical minor streak, which runs just under the surface. Songs like “Candle,” “Amnesia,” and “Cult” remind the listener: the edge is always near. The abyss waits below and it’s just as dark as you remember. Then finally, with “Cellar Heat” we are back where we started. The ambient tape loops from “Jahya” start again and closure has come, full circle.
There are good albums in the more recent half of the band’s history, but for me it never quite gets back to the raw trauma that is so well embodied in this album. Through personal tragedy, through social tragedy, and through environmental tragedy, this album was brought somehow into the world, and I am thankful for it immensely as a fan. But I would never want anyone to go through that period again.
Rest in Peace Dwayne.
