Gigapus by Severed Heads

Gigapus was Severed Heads' tenth studio album, issued by Volition Records in 1994 after two years of work, and it came with a gadget-age bonus: a CD-ROM called Metapus, stuffed with multimedia extras, which made it the first album released in Australia to carry one. That extra disc pushed the original price to $40, a steep ask for a record from a group that by then had long revolved around Tom Ellard, its one constant member since 1981.

The music is Ellard's electronic pop at its most polished: sequencers ticking like expensive clocks, synths gleaming, a dance-floor pulse running under the weirdness, with "Heart of the Party" as the hook that got through. The same year a remix of the old Severed Heads single "Dead Eyes Opened" went back out and reached number 16 on the ARIA Singles Chart, so the timing was sweet. Gigapus has been reissued several times since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.