Oh how I have been waiting for this moment. It has become clear over the years that Skinny Puppy won't be making another Too Dark Park any time soon. And that's fine. They've done it, they've grown, they've moved on. But that's not to say I would not welcome that sound back into my life in a split second. Enter Dead When I Found Her, whom I have just discovered hail from my own home base of Portland, Oregon. Michael, you and I need to share a coffee or beer sometime and talk about music. I think we would get along just fine, cuz Eyes On Backwards is the perfect spiritual successor to one of my favorite albums of all time.
I hear my share of Puppy-influenced electronic music. Given their status in the genre, this is no surprise. But with all of these other acts, they stop at "influence." They sound like a new band that has incorporated sounds and ideas from their heroes. Dead When I Found Her isn't satisfied with that. Eyes On Backwards is more like a thesis paper derived from hours of research. Every minute detail that defined the Canadian trio (or quartet depending on how you look at it) has been put under a microscope and painstakingly recreated. It's as if Dwayne Goettel himself has been reincarnated.
The similarities are so strong that if other bands like SP and Front Line Assembly were still doing this, I would call it a blatant knockoff. But they aren't, and Michael has clearly done enough homework to show he is a huge fan paying tribute to the classics a la Quentin Tarantino as opposed to some lowlife biter. "Tantrum" and "The Big Reverse" in isolation have so much to say about what made a great late-80's, early-90's industrial record. The synth effects, the subtle sound contortions, the microphone effects and oscillating vocals between ominous whispers and violent yelps; nailed it. There's even a simulated organ melody that sounds like a direct throwback. If this were a painting, even an expert would have a hard time deciphering it from the original artist's works.
And something that often gets missed nowadays in creating great industrial is a respect for the 80's synth pop and electronic music that immediately preceded it. If you go back and listen to the early work from most of these 90's industrial acts, many of them started off sounding more like The Cars than Ministry. Despite coming from a completely different era of music, Michael has managed to harness those same elements, perhaps most successfully on the moody "High Anxiety." So in conclusion, this is an album I have been wanting for a good 15 years, but never really expected to come around. Dead When I Found Her is the Nightwing to SP's Batman. You have made my morning and dropped this puppy (see what I did there?) just in time to soften some really harsh blows. Brap on, dude.