Remission by Skinny Puppy

Remission, Skinny Puppy's first release on Nettwerk, came out in 1984, a six-track 12-inch EP from the Vancouver outfit that began as cEvin Key's experimental side project during his time in the new wave group Images in Vogue. With singer Nivek Ogre up front and Bill Leeb, going by Wilhelm Schroeder, in the lineup, Key co-produced it with Dave Ogilvie, and you can hear the groundwork for industrial rock and electro-industrial being laid: cold machine beats, squelching synths and samples twisted into horror-movie dread.

A year later a cassette edition added five more songs and turned the EP into a full album, and that longer version became the one everyone knows. "Smothered Hope" is the standout, a slow, creeping electro pulse with Ogre's voice buried in the murk. It kept finding listeners long after the fact: Music Canada certified it gold on January 31, 2000.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.