Domingo 9 Fev 2014, 14h:09
20 May 2003
Julian Borger, The Guardian
Metallica is latest interrogation tacticUS military interrogators are using unorthodox musical techniques to extract information about weapons of mass destruction of fugitive Ba'athist leaders from their detainees - a fearsome mix of Metallica and Barney the Dinosaur.
The Americans have long been aware of the impact of heavy metal music on foreign miscreants. They blared Van Halen (among other artists) at the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega when he took refuge in the Vatican embassy in Panama City, and blasted similarly high-decibel music at Afghan caves where al-Qaida fighters were thought to be hiding.
Now it is reported that the combination of high-voltage rock and happy-smiley children's songs can break the will of the hardest terrorist or rogue element.
"Trust me, it works," a US "operative" told Newsweek magazine.
"In training, they forced me to listen to the Barney I Love You song for 45 minutes. I never want to go through that again."
US interrogators routinely employ "stress-and-duress" techniques, including sleep deprivation: treatment which human rights activists describe as a form of torture.
"Prolonged sensory deprivation and prolonged sensory over-stimulation can cause intense suffering. You can torture someone with psychological pressure," said Dinah PoKempner of Human Rights Watch.
Ralph Peters, a former colonel in army intelligence, called heavy metal "the American equivalent of sending bagpipes into battle".
"Anything you can do to disconcert someone is going to help," he said. "But it's a myth that torture is effective. The best way to win someone over is to treat them kindly."
Newsweek quotes a Sergeant Mark Hadsell explaining the qualities of heavy metal that bends the will of US enemies.
"These people haven't heard heavy metal before. They can't take it. If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken.
"That's when we come in and talk to them."
19 June 2008
Clive Stafford Smith, The Guardian
Welcome to 'the disco'For US interrogators seeking to disorientate and break Iraqi prisoners it's 'torture lite' - rock music played at excruciating volumes. But while the song choices may sometimes verge on the unintentionally funny, this appropriation of music by the military is anything but a joke
According to US military authorities, it was God himself who first wrote the strategy of "torture by music" into the field manual - by turning the amplifier up to 11 on the enemy. "Joshua's army used horns to strike fear into the hearts of the people of Jericho," retired US Air Force Lt-Col Dan Kuehl told the St Petersburg Times. "His men might not have been able to break down literal walls with their trumpets, but the noise eroded the enemy's courage." Kuehl, who teaches psychological operations (or psyops) at Fort McNair's National Defense University in Washington DC, added, "Maybe those psychological walls were what really crumbled."
It is not clear whether God would approve of the current US playlist: the number one slot is taken by the death metal band Deicide, whose track Fuck Your God is played at prisoners in Iraq. That said, the proponents of torture by music doubtless think they have come a long way since the early 1990s, when the FBI blasted loud music at the Branch Davidians during the Waco siege in Texas. The repertoire then included Sing-Along With Mitch Miller Christmas carols, an Andy Williams album and These Boots Are Made for Walking by Nancy Sinatra.
However unpleasant it may be to have such tunes blasted at your compound, bringing the music into an enclosed interrogation cell was a quantum leap in psyops. Nonetheless, in the strange lexicon of 21st-century America, the US military calls this "torture lite". Torture is apparently OK if it is not too "heavy". Metallica's Enter Sandman has been played at cacophonous levels for hours on end in Guantánamo Bay and at a detention centre on the Iraqi-Syrian border. One Iraqi prisoner said it was done at "an unidentified location called 'the disco'".
Unfortunately, some artists are not offended by their work being used to torture. "If the Iraqis aren't used to freedom, then I'm glad to be part of their exposure," James Hetfield, co-founder of Metallica, has said. As for his music being torture, he laughed: "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?" Such posturing may go with the territory for an artist of the Metallica genre, so there is no need to speculate about whether Hetfield is being naive or wilfully ignorant. But no sane person voluntarily plays a single tune at earsplitting volume, over and over, 24 hours a day, and expects to stay sane.
Despite this, to date, the Pentagon's semanticists have achieved their purpose, and many people think that torture by music is little more than a rather irritating enforced encounter with someone else's iPod. Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who is still held in Guantánamo Bay, knows a bit about such torture. The CIA rendered him to Morocco, where his torturers repeatedly took a razor blade to his penis throughout an 18-month ordeal.
When I later sat across from him in the cell, he described how psyops methods were worse than this. He could anticipate physical pain, he said, and know that it would eventually end. But the experience of slipping into madness as a result of torture by music was something quite different.
"Imagine you are given a choice," he said. "Lose your sight or lose your mind." While having your eyes gouged out would be horrendous, there is little doubt which you would choose. Mohamed remains in Guantánamo. The US military will decide, probably within two
weeks, whether to go forward with a military commission, based on "evidence" that was tortured out of him.To those who have the misfortune to study torture, all this is old hat. Members of the IRA interned in Northern Ireland in the 1970s recall the use of loud noise, piped into their cells, as the worst aspect of their ordeal. One Guantánamo interrogator blithely estimated that it would take about four days to "break" someone, if the interrogation sessions were interspersed with strobe lights and loud music. "Break" is another euphemism that is bandied about among torturers, as if "breaking" a person was some kind of psychological truth serum. Of course, the "results" you get from a "broken" prisoner have little to do with truth.
Beyond pure barbarism, there are various reasons why music torture fails in its ambition. As ever in this "war on terror", there is a disconnect between the purported goal of the US forces ("actionable intelligence") and the methods used to achieve it. An order comes down from on high, from a Bush bureaucrat who has a bright idea, and it is left to soldiers in the field to use their imagination. How some bored soldiers came up with David Gray's song Babylon, played at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, defies analysis. Sometimes, people simply misunderstand lyrics: in 1984, Ronald Reagan tried to co-opt Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA as a patriotic anthem to get himself re-elected, despite the song being about government betrayal of Vietnam veterans.
Sometimes the selections used are wryly appropriate for prisoners being held without trial for years on end: Queen's We are the Champions ("I've paid my dues/Time after time/I've done my sentence/But committed no crime") was a torturer's favourite at Camp Cropper in Iraq. Other songs unwittingly give voice to what could well be the prisoners' inner thoughts: Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name Of ("Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses … /Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!") was used at Guantánamo.
Inevitably, when poorly trained interrogators are encouraged to let their imaginations soar, they veer towards their own idiosyncratic perversions. One budding Emcee artfully mixed the sound of crying babies (which humans seem hardwired to abhor) with a television commercial for Meow Mix cat food.
Ultimately, though, the most overused torture song is I Love You by Barney the Purple Dinosaur. On the face of it, the lyrics may seem deeply inappropriate: "I love you, you love me - we're a happy family./With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you,/Won't you say you love me too?", but anyone whose child watches the television programme will know how grating it is. In the torture trade, this is called "futility music", designed to convince the prisoner of the futility of maintaining his position.
It is time that those musicians who oppose the use of music to torture fellow human beings made some noise - and they are beginning to. This year's Meltdown festival at London's South Bank, which Massive Attack are curating, has highlighted the issue of torture by music. Projections showing the horror of renditions and secret prisons will be used on their world tour.
When President Bush visited the UK at the weekend, we greeted him by playing the Barney the Purple Dinosaur theme tune. What next? Perhaps the release of a special compilation: we could call it Now That's What I Call Torture, President Bush's selection of eight songs he would take to a desert island, and blast it at him for all eternity.
'It's an issue that no one in the industry wants to deal with'
There is a clear reluctance within the record industry to discuss the use of music as torture. The Guardian attempted to contact artists whose songs have reportedly been used by the US military in detainment camps - a diverse group that includes metal bands Metallica, AC/DC, Drowning Pool and Deicide, hip-hop superstar Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, British singer-songwriter David Gray and the makers of children's TV favourite Barney the Dinosaur. In most cases, inquiries were met with a polite but firm "no comment" from management and PR representatives, or calls were simply not returned.
"It's an issue that no one wants to deal with," says David Gray, one of the few artists willing to speak about the subject. "It's shocking that there isn't more of an outcry. I'd gladly sign up to a petition that says don't use my music, but it seems to be missing the point a bit."
Gray's music became associated with the torture debate after Haj Ali, the hooded man in the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs, told of being stripped, handcuffed and forced to listen to a looped sample of Babylon, at a volume so high he feared that his head would burst.
"The moral niceties of whether they're using my song or not are totally irrelevant," says Gray. "We are thinking below the level of the people we're supposed to oppose, and it goes against our entire history and everything we claim to represent. It's disgusting, really. Anything that draws attention to the scale of the horror and how low we've sunk is a good thing."
The singer wonders whether governments who use music as a torture technique without asking permission from the artists involved could face legal action. "In order to play something publicly, you have to have legal permission and you have to apply for that.
I wonder if the US government bothered, but I very much doubt it. Perhaps you could sue, but let's face it, they're outside the law on the whole thing anyway."
However, Gray's anger is far from a universal reaction. Steve Asheim, drummer for the death-metal band Deicide, questions whether music really counts as torture. "Look at it this way," he says. "These guys are not a bunch of high school kids. They are warriors, and they're trained to resist torture. They're expecting to be burned with torches and beaten and have their bones broken. If I was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay and they blasted a load of music at me, I'd be like, 'Is this all you got? Come on.' I certainly don't believe in torturing people, but I don't believe that playing loud music is torture either."
Deicide's Fuck Your God is said to be a favourite for military interrogators, and the song topped the infamous "torture playlist" compiled by the American investigative magazine Mother Jones. It is worth noting that the lyrics are in fact anti-Christian, just as Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and Eminem's White America, also claimed as torture tracks, contain anti-establishment messages. But, as Asheim points out, "Most people who listen to this kind of music don't give a shit about a political message. They just wanna rock."
Was the song specifically chosen for its sonic and cultural impact on detainees? Asheim doesn't think so. "I don't believe there's a room where they discuss what songs they can play to annoy the prisoners.
I think they just show up at work with whatever they're listening to at the time. There's no shortage of metal-heads in the army, that's for sure. These guys who are going into battle, they're not listening to Elton John beforehand."
Asheim's theory raises the question of how the apparently innocuous Barney the Dinosaur music made it into a field dominated by hip-hop and death metal. Barney's producers, HIT Entertainment, declined to comment for this article. However, the creator of Barney's song I Love You, Bob Singleton, admits he "just laughed" when he heard it was being used by interrogators.
"It seemed so ludicrous that something totally innocuous for children could threaten the mental state of an adult," he says. "I would rate the annoyance factor to be about equal with hearing my neighbour's leaf blower. It can set my teeth on edge, but it won't break me down and make me confess to crimes against humanity. Will Barney songs break your psyche? I think that idea turns music into something like voodoo, which it certainly isn't. If that were true, then the inverse would be true. Playing hymns to someone strapped to a chair wouldn't make them a Christian."
Singleton, a classically trained composer, wrote and produced for the TV series Barney and Friends between 1990 and 2000. He says that the morality of what is done with his music once it is out of his hands is beyond his control.
"I would find it unfortunate that one of my works for kids was used as the underscore for a stripper, for example. I would prefer that my music for Barney is put to its best use with children, but beyond that there's not much I can do. Plus, we're not talking about dynamite or nuclear devices here. Music is just music. It's supposed to touch your mind, your body, and your emotions to varying degrees; but it doesn't fundamentally change people. I think that gives it much more credit than it deserves."
Paul Arendt
March 2013
Phil Bronstein, Esquire
The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden… Is ScrewedRead the whole article:For the first time, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden tells his story — speaking not just about the raid and the three shots that changed history, but about the personal aftermath for himself and his family. And the startling failure of the United States government to help its most experienced and skilled warriors carry on with their lives.
(…) He also insists that when it came to interrogation, repetitive questioning and leveraging fear was as aggressive as he'd go. "When we first started the war in Iraq, we were using Metallica music to soften people up before we interrogated them," the Shooter says. "Metallica got wind of this and they said, 'Hey, please don't use our music because we don't want to promote violence.' I thought, Dude, you have an album called Kill 'Em All.
"But we stopped using their music, and then a band called Demon Hunter got in touch and said, 'We're all about promoting what you do.' They sent us CDs and patches. I wore my Demon Hunter patch on every mission. I wore it when I blasted bin Laden." (…)
The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden ... Is Screwed
12 February 2013
Demon Hunter (a christian metal band) on their web page
REGARDING SEAL TEAM 6As you can imagine, our inboxes and phones (and those of our representatives) have been flooded with messages asking us how we feel about the Esquire article on the raid that brought Osama Bin Laden to justice that began circulating yesterday. Specifically, the person identified in the story as "The Shooter" said that Seal Team 6 wore the Demon Hunter emblem on their uniforms and "I wore it when I blasted Bin Laden."
Over the years, we have been overwhelmed by the personal (and unofficial) emails and letters we've received from members of the US military. We have been humbled and honored by the troops who've told us our music has offered them some comfort while overseas, while missing loved ones, while doing what they do best in order to keep America safe and protect the freedoms we enjoy. We've met many servicemen and women at our shows and they've shared their stories with us in person, as well. We wrote "The Soldier's Song" back in 2005 to pay tribute to these folks who've reached out to us. We included one such veteran among the Demon Hunter fans we profiled in our documentary film, 45 Days.
We have seen our symbol, a demon skull with a bullet hole in its forehead, tattooed on fans around the world. We've seen it made into sculptures, painted onto motorcycles, even spray-painted onto tanks and military planes. We often post these pictures on our Facebook page when we receive them. One such email, a few years ago, came from a special operations team who had crafted homemade Demon Hunter patches and put them on their uniforms. They asked us if it was OK if they did this and we of course told them "YES" because we are unapologetic supporters of our troops. In the last 24 hours, we have come to believe this team who contacted us a few years ago must have been Seal Team 6.
As for the talk about enhanced interrogation techniques that has sprung up in the media in the last 24 hours surrounding this story, we feel that it is an unnecessary distraction. It's been widely reported for years that heavy metal music has sometimes been used in these situations. We have no specific knowledge of our music being used for this, nor have we ever volunteered it to be used as such, nor are we commenting on it beyond that. The debate about enhanced interrogation techniques is for politicians, military intelligence, pundits and others of the like to have.
The members of Seal Team 6 and The Shooter are American heroes who deserve our support. We were among the Americans and people around the world abroad who supported the bringing to justice of one of the biggest mass murderers in history, who planned and executed some of the most horrific acts imaginable. All of the military who risk their lives to protect our freedoms earn our respect each and every single day. We are honored, humbled and blessed that Demon Hunter was of any support or comfort to Seal Team 6 or anyone in the US military at any time.
– DEMON HUNTER
February 19, 2013
http://www.blabbermouth.net
METALLICA: We Did Not Ask Military To Stop Using Our Music To Torture Prisoners
METALLICA has denied asking the U.S. military to stop using its music to psychologically torture prisoners of war.The Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden recently opened up to Esquire magazine about the raid on the Al Qaeda leader's compound and the shots that took his life, as well as the personal aftermath for the SEAL and his family. The SEAL, who is only referred to as "The Shooter" in the article, also mentions that he used the music of METALLICA on prisoners before interrogations — until the band asked them to stop.
The Shooter explained, "When we first started the war in Iraq, we were using METALLICA music to soften people up before we interrogated them. METALLICA got wind of this and they said, 'Hey, please don't use our music because we don't want to promote violence.' I thought, 'Dude, you have an album called 'Kill 'Em All'."
He added, "We stopped using their music, and then a band called DEMON HUNTER got in touch and said, 'We're all about promoting what you do.' They sent us CDs and patches. I wore my DEMON HUNTER patch on every mission. I wore it when I blasted Bin Laden."
"The Shooter" insisted that he did not torture prisoners, but that "repetitive questioning and leveraging fear was as aggressive as he'd go."
In a brand new statement posted on METALLICA's official web site, the band responded to The Shooter's comments in the Esquire article, saying: "There has been a lot of talk recently about us asking the military not to use our music to 'soften people up before interrogation.' We NEVER commented to the military either way on this matter. Any statements that have been made otherwise are not correct."
In a 2009 appearance on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show", METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich said that the band did not "advocate or condone" the use of the band's music for torture, adding that if someone really wanted to use music to torture others, there were groups that were far more extreme:"If there are people that are dumb enough to use METALLICA to interrogate prisoners, you're forgetting about all the music that's to the left of us. I can name, you know, 30 Norwegian death metal bands that would make METALLICA sound like SIMON AND GARFUNKEL."
METALLICA frontman James Hetfield was asked by a German TV network in 2008 how he felt about the band's music being used to torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He replied, "Part of me is proud is because they chose METALLICA . . . And then part of me is kind of bummed about it that people worry about us being attached to some political statement because of that."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrpY8V5JBy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuNfAFOv2F4
25 January 2014
Glenn BurnSilver, Phoenix New Times
Skinny Puppy's Music Was Used for Torture, So They Invoiced the Government
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 when cEvin Key, inspired by punk-dance grind of Throbbing Gristle and darker edge of Cabaret Voltaire, left his band Images in Vogue to create music with "big sounds" beyond the current crop of new wave synthesizer-forward bands. Working with singer Nivek Ogre, Skinny Puppy's industrial sound garnered immediate underground support.Constantly pushing the sonic envelope, the band eventually proved a strong influence on acts including Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. Ironically, Skinny Puppy's music was also an influence on U.S. government interrogators, who co-opted the band's music (without permission) to sonically torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Up on the Sun caught up with Key at his Los Angeles home to discuss the governments misguided use of his music, the band's most recent album, 2013's Weapon, the reissue of The Greater Wrong of The Right, producer Adrian Sherwood's role in shaping the industrial scene, and what to expect when the band takes the stage January 27 at the Marquee.
You released Weapon earlier this year. It received very positive reviews. What did it take to make an album that captured elements of the Skinny Puppy of old, but also develop something completely fresh?
cEvin Key: We spent an unnecessary amount of time on HanDover. It wasn't really about the songs, but there was a lot of personal issues and other things. The album took several years. That was not the way Skinny Puppy made records. We were always much more on the spot. Basically we'd make a song in a night and mix it in a night. We decided to get back to that philosophy and that type of idealism.
There was an idea I wanted to try to remake one of the songs from Remission, "Solvent." I had an idea how I originally made it and I wondered if I followed the exact steps if it would turn out the same. It kinda did, but in a weird way because it obviously has a newer sound. It set the pace for the whole record. (A song) didn't sound right if it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days. The goal was to make something fresh and quick and if it sounded too complex like we need to spend two weeks more on it, then it was like, "no, this isn't where it's at."
We had a cool concept on the record because we heard through a reliable grapevine that our music was being used in Guantanamo Bay prison camps to musically stun or torture people. We heard that our music was used in at least four occasions. We thought it would be a good idea to make an invoice to the U.S. government for musical services, thus the concept of the record title, Weapon.
What became of that invoice? Did they respond to it?
We never sent it. The album cover is the invoice. The original impetus of recording the album was those two concepts: the torture and the invoice.Given that so much of your music is protest oriented, how did that make you feel to learn that your music was being used to torture prisoners?
Not too good. We never supported those types of scenarios. It's kind of typical that we thought this would end up happening, in a weird way. Because, we make unsettling music we can see it being used in a weird way. But it doesn't sit right with us.Jumping back, you said you wanted to redo Solvent like before, but see what the modern results might be. How have things changed in making your music just in terms of equipment? When you began in the 1980s synthesizers were somewhat primitive without all the digital options.
It's changed so much so that if I had a moment (of thought) when we started making music that we would one day be able to do so using a computer, I would have laughed. But I've kept almost all the equipment that I've ever owned, so I tend to also use that same equipment when I record.
Not to limit myself, but to utilize the framework of some familiar sources, which I've tended to do for our history. I tend to go back to our history. It was important to try and keep the simplicity. In a lot of ways analog stuff has not been out done nor done any better with virtual instruments. I just kept it simple and kept the philosophy of it.
When Skinny Puppy began back in the early '80s, there were a lot of new wave bands using synthesizers, for better or worse, but you took it in a totally different direction. What was your inspiration, because at the time no one was really pushing to envelop as far as industrial or electronic music?
I was working extensively with a band called Images in Vogue, which was a poppy synth new wave band. We toured with Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Roxy Music and a lot of respectable names in new wave music. We did a lot of shows, but also a lot of studio work. In the studio I learned a lot about my end of the spectrum, which was the drummer/percussionist, and programming was a new form at the time.
What I noticed that there was a lot of cool music around like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle–what was going to become more popular music. I could feel the underground punk type feel in there. My only observation was they didn't have very heavy drums. They had drum machines that were very small sounding. I kind of had spent the last few years working with people trying to make big sounds.
So all I did was take the ideas I liked about the underground sound and punk and put it with a heavier production. That immediately formed some sort of weird, night-clubby accessible entrance way for Skinny Puppy because it started getting played in the dance clubs. That was out biggest asset, support from the dance club people.
I look at Ministry and see how you get tied in together–both started in the club scene.
Al (Jourgensen, Ministry founder) basically started in one direction, but once he heard Skinny Puppy decided it was time to make a heavier band and made the album Twitch. Twitch was a really important album for the whole genre. It actually introduced not only Al, but also Adrian Sherwood. Adrian Sherwood's production at that time was pretty much the peak of where people could imagine taking rhythmic music.
Where could industrial music go at its peak? At that moment Adrian Sherwood possessed the next level skills. When he worked with Al on Twitch it opened big doors for him, but obviously for us as well. Along came Nine Inch Nails a few years later, and Adrian was responsible for tweaking and morphing what would later become the first Nine Inch Nails record.I'm giving a pat on the back to Adrian Sherwood for his skill in crafting what would become industrial music. He worked with us on the Addiction EP. That was how we first met Al. He came armed with a demo to the studio. It was a classic time period where the industrial sound really came together.
Skinny Puppy is more or less an electronic industrial dance band. Is this a good time for your sound given that EDM is on the rise even as industrial music itself is in decline? Where does Skinny Puppy fit in at the moment?
Luckily, Skinny Puppy has never desired to fit in. At the beginning there wasn't a genre called industrial music. It was just a label. What we actually did and created was just what we felt. We were surprised and blown away that we were achieving some form of popularity. That wasn't really our thought when we started. That it went where it's gone has been quite… I couldn't have guessed.
We like follow what our original vision or feeling is, which has always been a gut feeling. People say the albums change a lot, but that's because we don't follow any trend. We don't try and keep up or compete with other bands in the genre. We keep our vision glued to the formula. It's like Coke Classic; you don't want to mess with the formula. For us you get this feeling when it's on track, and we try to follow that track. It we ever felt like it wasn't worth following that track it wouldn't be worth doing anymore.
When you've done something for 35 years you see things change three or four times. When we started there wasn't anything called hip-hop or house music. There was no such term as techno. We have been witness to all that but stick to our guns. We have gone through various morphs and influences through the times. We have been inspired by the 1993 techno scene and bands like Aphex Twin. There have been things that have affected us, but coming full circle I see us returning to our original vision more often than not.
Your stage shows have always been quite theatrical. What can we expect on this tour?
I won't really know it until I see it. Orge doesn't really tell us what his costumes are going to be until we see them. We all work on our departments so when we come together it's like a big collaborative. We've got Orge, our visualists, our drummer. We learn songs we haven't played before so that in the end it's interesting and not just the typical get on stage with jeans on. It's a chance to say something. I'm looking forward to seeing what he'll do. I really don't know.
In February you're reissuing The Greater Wrong of The Right. This is the first album released after the reunion, and it was perhaps the most poppy and most accessible Skinny Puppy album. But why choose this one given the strong earlier recordings in the catalog?
That era when we were reforming, it was a different era than now. The band has grown, matured and learned the way to become, in some ways, a different band again. It's more true to form of what Skinny Puppy will become. Right or wrong, it was a collective of people who wanted to perform in Skinny Puppy, but it was a collective and it wasn't really turned back into what I consider the purist form.
I'm not trying to degrade the album, but I'm just trying to say that after five years of having a band split up and having one guy die, maybe the band wasn't supposed to come back. We were brought back together by two German guys who insisted on overseeing everything. Orge and I got back together before the Doomsday gig, since he and I originally formed this, so that was the impetus.
We had so much fun doing that Doomsday show (Doomsday Festival, Dresden, Germany 2000) that we followed up with the idea to make an album. And I think the idea to make an album is preserved in The Greater Wrong of Right. Hence the title.
And if you can believe it, it is over 10 years since it was released. (The rights have) expired from SCV, the previous license holder. So now we can relicense it with another label, Metropolis. They've done a great job with the vinyl package and remastering.
Any bonus material or just the original album?
Just the album.So we get a sonic overload, but no extra music?
Unfortunately, we can't go back in time to make more music.
7 February 2014
Sean Michaels, The Guardian
Industrial band Skinny Puppy demand $666,000 after music is used in Guantánamo tortureBand file claim for $666,000 and express outrage at their music being used 'as an actual weapon against somebody' in the US detention centre.
A Canadian electro-industrial band is asking for thousands of dollars in royalties after learning that the US military used their music to torture prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Skinny Puppy claim they filed a $666,000 (£368,000) bill with America'd defence department.
"We sent them an invoice for our musical services considering they had gone ahead and used our music without our knowledge and used it as an actual weapon against somebody," keyboardist Cevin Key recently told CTV News. "I am not only against the fact they're using our music to inflict damage on somebody else but they are doing it without anybody's permission."
Skinny Puppy first learned about the alleged use of their music from a former Guantánamo Bay guard, who was "affected or offended" by the detention camp's practices. Although the Vancouver-born band originally planned to use their new album cover as an invoice to the Pentagon, they have now received "coaching" and apparently sent an actual physical document to government officials. They are even considering a lawsuit.
"We're not making a point looking for financial gain," Key underlined. But nor is the group entirely surprised that their songs were used as sonic punishment for Gitmo's detainees: "We thought this would end up happening, in a weird way," he admitted in an interview with the Phoenix New Times. "Because we make unsettling music, we can see it being used in a weird way. But it doesn't sit right with us."
Skinny Puppy aren't the only group whose music has reportedly been used to torture terrorist suspects and "enemy combatants" at the United States' base in Cuba. According to earlier reports, interrogators have employed songs by Metallica, Rage Against The Machine, Queen, Eminem, and even David Gray. "It's an issue that no one wants to deal with," Gray said in 2008. "It's shocking that there isn't more of an outcry."
Weapon, Skinny Puppy's 12th studio album, is out now.