Bites

Skinny Puppy's music was a force to be reckoned with in the 1980's "Industrial" music scene, where the band's approach was to overwhelm the listener with a barrage of an intensely layered soundscape of sampled dialogue, tortured vocals, and punishing clamor. These elements were already set in place for the band's second(?) album BITES, although later recordings would flesh out their sound more successfully.Apparently, from information I've learned by checking out Puppy discographies by way of fan-sites, BITES has been subjected to quite a few modifications in song quantity and running order since it's initial mid-80's release. (At one time it was bundled onto a single CD with it's similar-sounding predecessor  Remission EP ). The current release of BITES pulls together nearly all the stray tracks from these various reconfigurations onto a single disc, perhaps diluting it's initial cohesive statement in the process. The problem that mostly dogs BITES is that it's too heavily weighed down with an overabundance of instrumental and filler tracks. Its not so much that individually these additions are terrible, but collectively they do detract from the overall flow of the record. Some sound like underdeveloped demo material ("Dead Doll" and "Falling" in particular) while others are duplicated on other Puppy albums of this time period ("Film", "Icebreaker", and "Love"). The tracks with the sore-throated barkings of vocalist Ogre fare a little better, such as "Assimilate" and "The Choke", but elsewhere some of the vocal melodies aren't as strong or memorable. Its overlong running-time practically begs to be trimmed in half and the fun is in the individual listener to decide for him or herself to create the perfect track-list.I must make exception for the two outstanding instrumentals that conclude this CD. These two tracks, "The Centre Bullet" and the unlisted "One Day", are two of the best works I've heard from SP ever. Both are fascinating for their serenity, something Puppy is generally not renowned for. "Bullet" is nearly 10 hypnotic minutes of slow motion pulsating synths and rain-droplet keyboarding. "One Day" is a robotic lullaby with a eerie creaking sound as it's percussion. Both tracks easily foreshadow the works of 90's electronic musicians such as Aphex Twin and Autechre.I am going to give BITES a mediocre rating for the amount of filler tracks and that I feel there are better recordings by this band one should start out with (there are many other reviews found on this site as to which record that should be). Undeniably the band's sound would be further augmented with the arrival of third-member Dwayne Goettel on BITES' successor  Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse  where the instrumental offerings would stand on equal-footing with (or in the case of "Stairs and Flowers", surpassing) the vocal songs.FINAL RATING: 2.5 out of 5FAVORITE TRACKS: "Assimilate", "Icebreaker", "Centre Bullet", "One Day"

This review is relative to the 2017 vinyl re-release specifically. This is an important album in the history of industrial music and I enjoy adding a mint condition version of the sleeve to my collection, for that it gets two stars. As usual the problems are stemming from Nettwerk Records and their utter and complete incompetence. Considering they're 15+ years overdue on proper re-masters of their Skinny Puppy catalog, I had high hopes that this was the beginning of that process. Instead they somehow found a way to make it sound even worse than the original LP's pressed, in a low budget way, 33 years ago. The audio quality\fidelity is unimpressive to say the least- First off the bass frequencies are too much, not warm round bass, just a cheap EQ boost. The mid range is flat, boring, and without life. Worst of all is the lack of high frequency content, it isn't crisp, open, wide, lush, or airy in any way. Previous releases all sound superior to this. It's sad because the frequency content is all there to create an impressive remaster. I highly doubt Skinny Puppy themselves were involved in this release or would approve of it. The packaging is as bare bones as the original release- blank sleeve, no liner notes or any other information whatsoever about details of the re-release or vinyl mastering.Nettwerk- please for the sake of the fans, allow a respectable label to license your Skinny Puppy + Severed Heads back catalog so that they can do proper re-mastering and re-releasing of these classic albums... we beg you. Dark Entries 2017 re-release of Severed Heads Come Visit the big Bigot is a masterpiece in comparison to this garbage.

SKINNY PUPPY is the best band in the world. Always worth it! It was delivered beautifully!

Some songs on this album last a good amount of time other songs last about 1:00 minute which most of them are short but songs like 'Assimilate' 'The Coke' 'Deadlines' 'Last Call' all these alone are worth geting the album! if you like collecting albums and if you like the band! but if you don't like either of those options i would recomed downloading those songs alone.

Good

The best SP's Album

Great album

This being Skinny Puppy's first full-length release, it is a classic. I used to own it in vinyl in its original form, and now I have modern access to it.

I've been jamming to this for fifteen years! This is Skinny Puppy at its best.

Everything was perfect

Quite possibly my favorite SP album, the reissue is the same as the other reissues: nothing special, pretty cheaply done. That said I have most of the reissues and I think it sounds good. The best sounding reissue IMHO, is the 45 rpm ep Remission, my most played SP record.If you want to spend way more and get the originals, awesome, go for it. I love that I haven't spent more than $27 all in on one of these records. I have 5 SP records- every reissue sans Mind:TPI (not a fan) and enjoy them all.I absolutely cannot wait for the next batch. They've been releasing two reissues a year for 3 years now, and if this year follows that trend we should be seeing Too Dark Park and Last Rights, which is as far as I'm prolly gonna go.At the end of all that I will have 7 albums for around $160, brand new, all in. Thats less than $25 an album, which fits my budget.Some used SP albums go for $200+.I'm sure the originals sound better but I prolly wouldn't notice enough of a difference to justify paying almost 10x the price, and for something used versus new.Finally, the 3rdParty. I didn't get this thru prime as I found a way better price at TheProduct(s)Hub or whatever. I usually don't order from them and have a hard time recommending them for a couple reasons.1) The packaging- A joke. I wish I still had the pics I took to compare it to record I got thru Amazon prime. You could see the record thru the packaging it was so poor, so thin, and flimsy. The record wasn't damaged by the jacket was bent as was evident with the whole package being bent on one corner. It wasn't the absolute worse I'd ever received, but possibly second.2) The wait- Compared to prime and other 3rd Parties this was the longest wait time for a record I've had. I wanna say it was close to a month, and two weeks longer than a couple other 3rdParty vendors in the UK that I usually use.So in short it's a great album that got a bare-minimum reissue, just be careful of which vendor you get it from.

BITES (1985)!! AUS den Anfängen einer Band, die ihren Weg gefunden hat.DIE MICH seit gut drei Jahren nicht mehr loslässt. Jippii.\ö/DAS ist erst mal meine elfte Scheibe der Kanadier!!!DIESER Künstler mit der sehr speziellen Muke, die mich immer wiedermit ihrer Form der INTELLIGENT DANCE MUSIC verzaubern.*****:o)Extra zählen natürlich die fünf weiteren vom Nebenprojekt OHGR. Und ich bin stolz. Aber sowas von.SKINNY PUPPY- manche bezeichnen sie als total durchgeknallt- muahaha-brauche ich eigentlich gar nicht mehr vorstellen. Tu`s aber trotzdem.Wen die INDUSTRIAL- Szene begeistert, der hört sie eh.Und wer mit INDUSTRIAL nix anfangen kann, für den wird es schwer......in die komplex- abgedrehte Welt von SKINNY PUPPY einzutauchen.Aber das soll nicht mein Problem sein. Selber schuld. Hühü.Nach einem Labelwechsel 1993 kam es zu Spannungen in der Band.Probleme mit Drogen eskalierten und Nivek Ogre verließ im Juni 1995SKINNY PUPPY. Zwei Monate später starb Dwayne Goettel an einer Überdosis.Das Album " The Process " wurde trotzdem 1996 in Erinnerung an Dwaynefertiggestellt und veröffentlicht. -Trotz finanziell lukrativer Angebote lehnten die Bandmitglieder eineReunion ab. Bis zum Jahre 2000......es folgten neue Studioalben:" The Greater Wrong Of The Right " (2004) und " Mythmaker " (2007).Beide natürlich TOP.*************************************************************************Im Februar 2014 forderte SKINNY PUPPY von den USA 666.000 Dollar als Tantiemen.Weil ihre Musik angeblich während der Folter von Guantanamo- Gefangenen eingesetzt wurde.SIEBZEHN SONGS!LAUFZEIT: 72.56 MINUTEN!!SKINNY PUPPY ist keine Schwiegermutter- Musik. Haha.Aber meine!!

Leicht hatten es Einem die Kanadier tatsächlich nie gemacht. Ihre eng mit dem Lärm verbundene Vision von Industrial stellte den Zuhörer immer wieder vor eine große Herausforderung, der man sich lieber Kopf schüttelnd abwandte, als sich ihr zu stellen. Doch dafür gab es bei "Bites" noch keinerlei Gründe, weil Skinny Puppy hier noch am Anfang ihrer Karriere standen und ihre sound-satanistischen Klang-Experimente erst auf späteren Alben ausloteten. "Assimilate" und "Dead Lines" fallen durch ihr eng anliegendes Korsett aus geradlinig, monotonen Rythmen etwas aus dem Rahmen des Albums, dessen Stil doch eher durch seine durchaus vielseitige, offene, experimentier- und improvisier-freudige Art auffällt. Immer wieder auftauchende Instrumentalstücke wie "Church", "Film" oder "Love" weisen bereits eine gruselig-finsetere Atmosphäre auf und geben dem Album öfters eine überraschende Wendung. Gegen Schluss driftet "Bites" mit "The Centre Bullet" und "One Day" sogar in sehr ruhige, Ambient- artige Sphären ab. Einen Gesamteindruck bekommt man von "Bites" allerdings auch nach dem 20gsten mal hören nicht. Die Band probiert noch Vieles und tobt sich aus, so dass das Album keineswegs fragmentiert oder unentschlossen wirkt, aber eben auch noch nicht alle Fäden am Ende zusammen laufen.