Bites by Skinny Puppy

Bites, from 1985 on Nettwerk, is Skinny Puppy's first full-length album, the Vancouver outfit's second big release after the Remission EP, and a cold blast of the new industrial noise. What started as cEvin Key's side project away from the new wave of Images in Vogue had become a real band with Nivek Ogre howling up front, and Wilhelm Schroeder, the alias of Bill Leeb, was in the mix too. Key produced it with Dave "Rave" Ogilvie, the studio hand who'd stay with them for years.

It's a harsh, twitching thing: machine rhythms grinding like factory gears, samples and synth drones smeared across the grooves, Ogre snarling over the top. "Assimilate" is the track that has lasted. Steven R. Gilmore designed the cover, a 1993 CD reissue added cassette-only and rare tracks, and it went gold in Canada in 1994.

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