Double LP
This came in late the other week and slipped under the radar a touch, which is probably just how Tom Ellard likes it. Nonetheless, this one's a real coup for the Severed Heads acolytes out there who've likely been waiting on a reissue of Ear Bitten ever since most of the original copies were destroyed in a house fire years back. First released as a split LP with Rhythmx Chymx in 1980 in order to half pressing costs, it's a compelling early document of the 'Heads absurdist re-reading of industrial music. The band name may be gruesome enough and they certainly weren't shy of noise and abrasion, but they were also clearly a crew of arch pisstakers too, smart enough to know you can travel just as far with humour as you can ideological dogma (if not further). And wasn't industrial, in its early form, meant to be about a radical reimagining of the accepted tropes? That in mind, I'd argue Ear Bitten displays as much of a debt to The Residents as it does Throbbing Gristle, a mix of tape manipulations, rudimentary electronic clang n bang and icy witticisms that sits together like a particularly brutal exquisite corpse. The good news keeps coming, too, since Dark Entries have not only pull together the original recordings but found an entire other side of previously unreleased music recorded at the same time that shows that Severed Heads were clearly only just getting started. Old music, plus extra new old music, and without having to pay £2500 for it on Discogs. That's borderline charitable.
