Cevin Key – cathARTic explorer

Trigger warning, this post deals with some heavy topics and talks about transcending trauma. This is also an indirect love letter to the band, Skinny Puppy (SP).

The Crash

Over the past 6+ months, I have been going through significant life changes. Altered by my ageing body and stress of a destabilizing society, I succumbed to yet another health crisis that landed me in the ER, urgent care, and two surgeons offices. After a lifetime of invasive skin issues, I was finally diagnosed with Hidradenitis suppurativa while also dealing with skin cancer on my face at the same time. The cancer was cut out a week after discovery. Thankfully, I am better now.

Since then, I have made some important changes to my life that seem to be helping my condition. Throughout the process, layers have been pulled back (quite literally) revealing more of who I am, to myself. While difficult, it has also been cathartic at the same time.

Additionally, pent up frustration and anxiety has come about due to:

Feeling vulnerable due to health issues while ageing
Isolation due to disability and sensory burnout
Economic destabilization and fear of becoming homeless
Grief over loss of livelihood and community
Living in a society that values profit and clout over authenticity
Diminished affordable living / housing
Increasing fear of a broken medical system
Feeling unsafe due to increased crime, drug addiction epidemic
Experiencing paralysis over political division
Environmental demise, climate anxiety, wildfires etc

Rock Bottom

All this accumulated into a mental avalanche that I have not seen in myself before and brought me to an unexpected place – rock bottom.

At first I thought I needed to seek a therapist. And maybe I still do, but I realized that there is something else I need that wouldn’t be accessible through traditional therapy. It has to come from my own understanding of how to work through catharsis – unique to my needs – something that will provide safe passage for my torment to be processed and transformed. This is no job for just meditation and positive thinking (although they do play a role), no, this is a job for “reality catharsis” – as the band Skinny Puppy described themselves in an interview regarding the misconceptions of their work.

Skinny Puppy

They are a legendary Canadian electro-industrial band
They formed in Vancouver back in 1982
Co-founded by cEvin Key and Nivek Ogre
Joined by Bill Leeb prior to forming Front Line Assembly
Joined by Late synth genius Dwayne Goettel in 1986
Collaborated with Ministry’s Al Jourgensen
Pioneers of industrial rock and EBM
Messages of animal rights, environmental destruction, corporate & government corruption, injustice
Famous for gory, theatrical live horror shows
Influenced giants like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson
They completed their Final Tour in late 2023

Somewhere along my healing journey in 2026, they found me, but it’s not the first time.

First Wave

My first introduction to them was when I was in my teens – in the late 80’s. I had fallen asleep and was woken around 2 am to a very eerie but enthralling synth sound on the radio that I forgot to turn off. It was them – they leaked into me while I slept and then woke. I was 20 when I saw their Too Dark Park concert in Toronto in 1990. I have never seen anything else like it – and I have been to many concerts. Their strong messages of injustice penetrate to your core through Ogre’s signature dark and haunting voice paired with epic danceable beats while visually infused with an unforgettable stage aura. It’s more than entertainment, it’s cathartic.

Around this time I started to emotionally process my being abducted in a park by a stranger when I was 10 years old. Thankfully I escaped unharmed as I was rescued by a friend. They never caught the guy. Up until then, I had buried it and kept it hidden. After this I went on to study Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly known as Ryerson University, and made an experimental film about confronting fears, that was nominated at HotDocs documentary festival.

Second Wave

During my 30’s, when I lived in Mexico, I gravitated back to them while rehabilitating vertigo symptoms and working out grief after Luna died. Luna was a famous orca that I worked with in 2003, he was killed in 2006 when he was sucked into a large boat propeller. I listened to Skinny Puppy while working out at the gym and hiking long distances on the beaches of the Maya Riviera. The sensory experience was so intense when listening to them while engaging in cardio, that it felt like I was being propelled into outer space. The combination of living closer to the equator in a vitamin D rich environment, a nature infused active lifestyle while engaging in “reality catharsis” brought me into the best shape of my life. It was the best time of my life and I became a better version of myself fully engaged in the peak of my creative journey.

Third Wave

And just like that, it’s 2026. Like many, I find myself in the pits of despair with the issues plaguing our world today. I am not depressed, I am just experiencing what I feel is a healthy reaction to an unhealthy society. Severe frustration requires severe solutions, but safe ones. And that’s where I recently found myself in a comforting embrace, pulled from somewhere within me but with the empathetic helping hand of SP.

My current fixation came about after going through a prolonged period of both mental and physical pain. I found myself deep-diving interviews, concert clips, online discussions, written articles and so on. Certain songs (Worlock) surge through me like electric volts, almost purging the anguish out of me. It feels so good. And this is the very reason why the music was made in the first place, as explained by Ogre in an interview. He needed it for himself to work out his issues and believed that others would probably need it too – he was right.

The more I listened to them talk, the more I realized they’re regular people who found an extraordinary way to express themselves even amidst their own struggles. They never became mainstream, forever preserving them as relatable and accessible artists which is important to me. I don’t resonate as strongly with superstars.

Reality Catharsis University

Along the way it dawned on me that I needed to take further creative action and start crafting my own noises for the purpose of catharsis. A self-made prescription if you will.

And so with that goal in mind, I started Reality Catharsis University – as taught to me by SP of course. The goal through self-directed learning is to help me evolve in my creative and cathartic journey simultaneously. Tasks include: watching interviews with band members then and now, taking notes from their lived experiences – not just as performers but as therapeutic art practitioners. I have joined cEvin Key’s Patreon in order to show gratitude and better understand his synthesizer mastery. I have watched countless interviews with Ogre about his life journey (I would love to interview him), and analyzed hundreds of comments across the internet by fans and how their lives have been transformed in a positive way.

Inspired to learn some of their melodies, I took it a step further and purchased an Arturia Midi-controller, Mini Lab 3 and am now learning DAW software packages to help me compose sounds. With the help of my musician mother who is a vocal coach at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, I will be taking piano lessons, while also trying to excavate my childhood piano playing skills.

Throughout my years of challenges, ironically I have lost my fear of exposure and have gained confidence in myself to take on this task at age 55. My intention is not to be a band or become a musician but to provide a new form of music therapy catered to my particular needs, inspired by the feels of SP and other synth heavy bands like Boards of Canada. In the ageing process, SP has shown me that becoming older doesn’t mean becoming weak or soft. That I can still vibe into that harsh edge in myself that still breathes too much fire. It’s not all who I am, but it’s part of who I am and it needs to be nurtured in the right way. I have learned before that by doing so, I evolve into something better.

Some of the best teachers are not just professors, or experts in a field, or self appointed healers (there seems to be so many), but are those who have lived through something so profound – right before our eyes. I will leave you with some paraphrased words of wisdom by Ogre as synthesized by the many interviews I have listened to:

Be your authentic self
Make what resonates with you
Don’t follow trends
Keep it textured
Keep it dirty

White Kitty Noise

And with that, my new musical endeavour is called “White Kitty Noise”. WKN is in part named after my late (white) cat, Henderson, and my need for white noise to drown out my chronic tinnitus – while playfully accompanied by a cute Lego mini-fig. You can hear some examples below. One of my exercises is to pick something I am feeling or dealing with, search for a sound with the Arturia that resonates with that and then compose an intuitive piece that is 3 minutes or less (to fit in the YouTube Shorts format). I am also experimenting with live looping through Ableton and YouTube Lives. A reminder, it’s about feeling, not about being good or successful.

I’m in the beginning stages of this project and will document it as I go along on my YouTube channel. So far it has been a rather surprising and exciting journey, one I didn’t see coming. See you there.

Thank you, SP for all that you do. You have been an effective cathartic vehicle for me. I hope my story serves as a testament to how important your work is and that it’s helped me to level up several times in my life.

Please note: I am no SP expert. I have not even heard all of their work but what I have heard was enough to help me in my life. I am still discovering them today.

Great interviews to watch (I will be adding to the list):

Tag: Cevin Key

White Kitty Noise