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Prodded along by Spotify's recommendation system, I've finally delved into Industrial roots I'm well aware played a pivotal role in informing the likes of Ministry and Frank Klepacki, In turn influencing Rammstein and Timothy Steven Clarke. These influences alone are not strong enough to muster adoration. Repetition has certainly highlighted its musical sensibilities from abrasion and mechanized aesthetics but this familiarity still lingers on an oddity of curious obscurities, lacking a deeper emotional connection.
Bites' sequence of seventeen songs play like experiments of investigation. Musical elements are stripped, rearranged, emphasis pushed onto the unusual and bizarre in search of chemistry to conjure radical, dystopian emotions. In the context of its time, clearly a bold and luminous stride is undertaken into emerging territories. However the shadows of predecessors strip the unusual alien charms of its magic.
Many tracks are simply structured with brief repetitions of Elctro-Industrial noises. Sparse, softly physical percussion and sensible yet subtle melodies accompany. With obscure Horror samples, snarky unwelcoming vocals and other tidbits, the looping instrumentals are taken on psycho visual trips of inhuman suffering. Its resolutions converge on unsettling emotion, often paranoid and conspiratorial in nature yet oddly mellow in comparisons to other breeds of darkness that have been ventured too.
Riffling over these tracks one by one, its hard to pick distinguished ideas that amount to more than the sum of its parts. The album loads its more conventional songs upfront, melody more apparent. Then delves deeper into a string of unstructured noise experiments before landing on two warmer cuts in an obvious tone shift at the end. These were my favorite tracks, they spoke to a calmness one can mellow out with - a utility if you like. Skinny Puppy has been curious listen, one I will continue with.
Rating: 5/10