On September 5, 1986, Skinny Puppy released Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, an album that helped establish the band as one of industrial music’s most distinctive and influential acts.
Forty years later, the record still sounds remarkably strange. Built around abrasive electronics, sampling, pounding rhythms and Nivek Ogre’s unmistakable vocals, the album captured Skinny Puppy pushing their sound into darker and more experimental territory.
At the center of it was “Dig It,” one of the band’s most recognizable early tracks. Its mechanical rhythm and unsettling commentary on modern life made it an immediate standout—and the accompanying 1986 music video was every bit as provocative.
The music video for “Dig It” presented cEvin Key in a graveyard, an office worker suffering a heart attack, stock-market imagery and other surreal scenes, all wrapped in the band’s trademark disturbing aesthetic. Its unusual letterbox presentation even became part of the controversy, with Canada’s answer to MTV, MuchMusic objecting to imagery appearing in the borders of the video.
“Dig It” would receive MTV exposure while simultaneously attracting censorship, perfectly capturing Skinny Puppy’s uneasy relationship with the mainstream.
The “Dig It” video also found its way onto a pair of obscure 1986 promotional VHS releases. Capitol Records included the video on its New Releases Compilation 12/86, an NTSC promo tape distributed specifically to clubs and video programs. A second promo, Telegenics – December 1986, also featured “Dig It.” Neither was a commercial home-video release, making these early tapes particularly interesting pieces of Skinny Puppy memorabilia today.
Four decades later, Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse remains a landmark of early industrial music. And “Dig It”—both the song and its unforgettable video—still offers a perfect introduction to what made Skinny Puppy so compelling in the first place.