Though guitar is used throughout, the album takes a step back from the Ministry-inspired direction of the band's previous release, favoring instead a more chaotic, electronic sound.
[4] Goettel told Karen Woods of Alternative Press that he didn't feel "trapped" by the direction taken on Rabies and went on to say that "it [the album] may have been hanging around in the same territory as Ministry, but we were just crossing paths".
Goettel revealed in 1991 that he had changed his position concerning Rabies, stating that while some of the material present on the album was "great", the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision".
On the tour, he was playing keyboard and providing vocals (Ogre can be seen and heard on the In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up video and CD).
Cyberaktif was a collaboration between Key and Bill Leeb from the band Front Line Assembly, with Goettel acting predominantly as a support musician.
[8] The energy and enthusiasm generated from this diverse array of side projects would ultimately culminate into what would become the Too Dark Park record, which Key described as "the follow up to the last pure Puppy album", VIVIsectVI.
[9] Ogre declined the offer, explaining his reason why to Alternative Press in 1991: Al is a fucking great guy, a real cool person.
[6]With Ogre no longer committed to the Revolting Cocks tour and all side projects taken on by Key and Goettel completed, Skinny Puppy reassembled in studio to begin production on a new album.
The song "Morpheus Laughing" contains a sample of actor Bruce Willis saying the line "they appeared to me as if in a dream" from a Wayne's World skit on Saturday Night Live.
In the US, Capitol Records promoted the album's release by distributing cardboard masks based on the monsters featured in Jim Cummins' cover artwork.
[13] Too Dark Park was well received upon its release in 1990,[21] with critics like Spin magazine's Staci Bonner declaring the record to be the band's "return to the bloodbath".
Bonner gave the most praise to the album's sampling, calling the technique's use "artful", and concluded that "you can be a 'spun web deluded of life' or a 'crushed velvet corpse' because with Skinny Puppy, everyday is Halloween.
"[22] Jean Carey of the Tampa Bay Times praised the album, describing it as the band's "watershed moment", and calling attention to the "vaguely central theme" of environmental destruction.
[18] Steven Perez of the Tampa Tribune also took note of the album's "environmental kick", saying Too Dark Park's "impressiveness lies beyond the mirage of its droning industrial instrumentation".
[23] Alex Henderson of AllMusic gave the album four and a half stars, describing it a "forceful and consistently abrasive", but at the same time danceable.
[24] Trouser Press magazine described Too Dark Park as "environmentally minded" and likened the gloomy musical style employed on the songs "Nature's Revenge" and "Morpheus Laughing" to those of new wave acts such as Joy Division and Gary Numan.
[25] Martin Aston in Q Magazine noted that the album "quakes with the usual quotient of fury and frustration (...) matched only by the relentlessly crushing beats of their electronic hardcore throb".
[20] In a mixed review for The Morning Call, Diana Valois said the album was "harsher in parts" than the band's previous releases, and approved of the songs "Nature's Revenge" and "Rash Reflection" for "rising above the muddled, angry morass".
[26] Billboard also gave the album a mixed review, stating that while fans of alternative music would enjoy it, there was not much to offer that couldn't be found in other, more accessible groups such as Ministry.
[28] In 2013, Francois Marchand of the Vancouver Sun named Too Dark Park one of the best albums to come out of Mushroom Studios, describing it as a "nightmarish vortex of hard-hitting electronic rock".