This more so then other Puppy albums gives you a mid-tempo dark blast of pulsing beats and loops, takeing off right where Bites left off but adding to Skinny Puppy's allover accesability. Still for your money you get 3 genious(absoloutely awesome!) dance hits First Aid, Addiction and Deep Down Trauma Hounds they alone being worth admission yet still several excellent noise scapes that give mainstream music listeners an insight to the underworld of noise and anti-music and is a Skinny Puppy trademark. Such musical psychedellia can be SO sumptuously profound with emotional articulation.

Welcome to Skinny Puppy... if you dont like them right off they will scare you and irratate you untill you love them for thier perfect genious!


Breakdown amidst the mixtures of Skinny Puppy   May 18, 2004
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Although I am a huge fan of All of SP's music, as far as I am concerned nothing that they have done compares to Cleanse Fold and Manipulate, even though Vivisect VI ans Too Park Park are also great great albums in their own rights. If you are thinking of buying their reunion album, or better yet catching one of their few US concerts, and want to see just how far they have evolved, by all means get this album now! Of course, CF&M represents Skinny Puppy in their gloomiest and darkest era, and this is truly a beutifully punishing album to listen to. Tracks like Shadow Cast, Draining Faces and the Mourn meld gothic horror, ingenious sampling, with industrial percussion like no other band ever has, :wumpscut: probably coming the closest on Eevil Young Flesh. On other tracks such as Addiction and deep down Trauma Hounds, cEVIN and Goettel manage to meld seamlessly catchy, even dancy beats with the menacing lyrics provided by Ogre, which as always have something to say about the ills of contemporary society, without sounding preachy or pretentious. And who said Industrial music couldn't be a vehicle for social change! Cleanse Fold and Manipulate sounds as fresh and original as any Industrial music out today, being far more original and inventive too, and is an essential album for any fan of industrial music, ebm or darkwave.
Brap On!


Dramatic end of the 80's   April 6, 2002
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

While most Skinny Puppy albums are easily labeled "dark", CFM is certainly one of the most. Cevin Key later reflected that the production technology employed had as much to do with it as did the mindset of the band at the time. This was the band's first album written completely to hard disk, and the use of the computer as arranger certainly added a cold, technical element to it.

Musically, the CD broke new ground for the group. While many of SP's songs made references to film samples, and often began or ended in dark, ambient loops, whole tracks here are devoted to such. Draining Faces, The Mourn, and Epilogue contain a track long presentation of film samples, loops, and general background noise that are crafted in a way to create dark, haunting pieces. While more dismissive comparisons have been made to Pink Floyd, this element made a lasting and distinct impact. In a strange crossover, SP's use of film in its tracks led it back into film; for example, many years later, the Blair Witch filmmakers listed Draining Faces as a track on a tape found in the project's abandoned car.

Other tracks were more accessible to the DJ booth. The second track, Addiction, which was also released as one of two singles, features the layered and rhythmic approach that would be the signature of many CDs to come from SP. While a song with serious lyrical content, Ogre's vocal style on this was actually a dig on Front Line Assembly and former SP member Bill Leeb's vocal style. The second to last track, Anger, while devoid of most lyrical or musically thematic content, provides a fantastic conclusion to the album - a driving, pounding beat comprised of six or seven separate elements all beautifully orchestrated into one, with Ogre's clenched-teeth ranting moving in and out of the track.

On a slightly critical note, some of the tracks seemed to rely on pre-set synthesizer sounds (some of them you'd hear on a The Cars album!) rather than the fantastic abilities of Dwayne Gottell and his multi timbral, polyphoic signature pads and noises.

SP's promo shot for this album featured Nivek Ogre sporting massive bruises to his face and appearing to be an inch from death; most of his lyrical content on this album was highly focused on the politics of repression and violence. Songs like Second Tooth, Tear Or Beat, and Deep Down Trauma Hounds are all suggestive of the contrived politcal power of many third world countries during the cold war eighties.

An essential album, for it represents more or less the last of SP's eighties sound before Vivisect VI gave it a head start into the 90's.


Creepy and chaotic, yet interesting at the same time...   January 19, 2004
 3 out of 6 found this review helpful

Believe it or not, one of my former co-workers gave this CD to me after he found it too creepy to listen to. Honestly, he wasn't far off the mark! Although I'm not the world's biggest SP fan, I do enjoy some of their music. So how do I describe their music? Creepy, chaotic, scary, and horrific (as some would describe) are some adjectives that come to mind. For those of you not familiar with SP, consider this album (and all others) to be the soundtrack to your worst fears and nightmares come true! No, there are aren't any loud metallic guitars or fast banging drums (like Ministry and NIN use). Melodramatic synth melodies accompanied by Nivek Ogre's unique somber and emotional narration are all that's needed! If you're still interested in SP, start off with "The Singles Collection" and then this album!