Skinny Puppy: Bites [NETTWERK]

Why you'll love it

This Nettwerk reissue is pressed in Canada and restores the original nine-track LP. Bites went gold in Canada and won the Heritage Public Prize at the 2023 Polaris Music Prize.

This edition

• Pressed in Canada

About the album

Vancouver in 1985 didn't look much like the birthplace of a global industrial movement, but cEvin Key, Nivek Ogre and Bill Leeb had other plans. Fresh from the Remission mini-album, they made Bites for the city's young Nettwerk label, producing it with Dave Ogilvie while Terry McBride oversaw things for the label. It was Leeb's last album in the band before he went off to start Front Line Assembly.

The sound is cold, cleanly produced and carefully textured: drum machines, grinding synths, Ogre's treated vocals and film samples spliced in like found footage. "Assimilate" borrows a famous line from Marathon Man and became a club staple, "Blood On The Wall" pulls dialogue from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, "The Choke" lifts from Polanski's The Tenant, and "Icebreaker" and "Basement" sample The Legend of Hell House. Billboard recommended it as a strong club collection in the Kraftwerk mould, and Steven R. Gilmore designed the cover.

Chart magazine later counted it among the most influential Canadian albums of the 1980s, and when Leeb rejoined the band on stage in Vancouver in 2014, "Assimilate" was the encore. Rarely has a song about being absorbed by something bigger been quite so welcoming.

Also at Kops: more Skinny Puppy on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Nettwerk, a reissue of the 1985 album.