Mythmaker | ||||
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Studio album by Skinny Puppy | ||||
Released | January 30, 2007 | |||
Recorded | 2005–2006 | |||
Genre | Post-industrial, electronic, ambient | |||
Length | 48:56 | |||
Label | Synthetic Symphony | |||
Producer | Mark Walk, Scaremeister, Ken Marshall | |||
Skinny Puppy chronology | ||||
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Mythmaker is the tenth studio album by industrial group Skinny Puppy. It was released on January 30, 2007.
Lead vocalist Nivek Ogre said the band took a simplified approach, but that it was a difficult record to make. It charted on a number of billboard charts, and received mostly positive reviews, with critics focusing on whether it was stylistically similar to previous albums.
Tracks from the album were featured in the Saw V soundtrack and Jackass video game. The band supported the album with the Mythrus Tour later the same year it was released.
Nivek Ogre stated that making the album was very difficult due to dealing with a personal relationship and other events in Los Angeles during the time the album was being made, but that those events were incorporated into the album itself.cEvin Key, while acknowledging Ogre's personal difficulties, said that while the extended writing process of the album could make one feel "stranded within your head space", having more time to write, and writing more songs than usual, helped the album.
Ogre called style of the music on Mythmaker "simplified" and said the band "stayed truer to cEvin's compositions". He continued that the album had a new sound, but also retained elements of the "archetypal" Skinny Puppy sound, and the production was superior to previous albums. Key stated that he would write songs, and then send them to Mark Walk, who would make changes and send them back. Key said that it "open[ed] a door for me to hear it differently". Ogre said that album's themes were control and mythology.
Mythmaker marks the third occasion on which a Skinny Puppy album cover was created by an artist other than long-time collaborator Steven R. Gilmore, though he continues to do the sleeve design and layout for the band. The cover uses a painting by Manuel Ocampo entitled "Why I Hate Europeans", which has been altered for the cover.
Mythmaker was released on January 30, 2007. The album barely broke into the Billboard 200 at No. 200, but charted in three other Billboard charts, reaching No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart,No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart. It peaked in all four charts in the same week of February 17, 2007.