You wanna know your problem is?
Well, don’t ask me. I’m not your Shrink.
Spike Hellis returns with No Bite, and the joke is already grinning at you before the first beat has exploded. The Los Angeles duo’s second preview of Successor, due August 7 via Over-Pop, arrives like a chrome-plated insult with a cigarette burn on its tongue: lean, clipped, mean, and menacing.
They ain’t your therapists, that’s for sure. This is body music, with its teeth filed to points, though the title would have you believe otherwise. No Bite rides a soft jackhammer groove, sparse, minimalist industrial EBM, and dry, mechanical funk. Cortland Gibson and Lainey Chang refrain from overpacking the track by letting the empty space do some of the dirty work. The beat hits, withdraws, hits again, and every pause feels like somebody waiting for you to flinch.
There is a special cruelty in restraint. Plenty of bands in this lane mistake volume for violence, pile on distortion until everything becomes an expensive blur, and then wonder why nobody looks afraid. No Bite‘s power comes from precision: the bassline’s blunt insistence, the synths’ clipped little wounds, the vocal delivery moving around the track like a bored predator tapping the glass. You can hear the old EBM gods rattling around in the pipes, but this is no Wax Trax! museum march. It has the nasty modern confidence of a duo that has spent time in real rooms, under real lights, with real bodies pressed against the pit fence.
Gibson and Chang have shared stages with Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb, and No Bite channels that lineage, evoking a room where fog juice hangs in your hair, and the dancefloor has absorbed enough questionable decisions to qualify as a legal witness. The track is compact, confrontational, and just a little unstable, thudding away in the dark on spite alone.
Listen to No Bite below and order the single here.
Spike Hellis will release their second studio album, Successor, on August 7 via Over-Pop, with No Bite serving as its second preview after By God. The roadwork begins just ahead of the album’s release, kicking off July 31 in Santa Ana before stretching across the Southwest, Texas, the South, the East Coast, Canada, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest, eventually circling back to California for an October 24 hometown-area close in Los Angeles.
They’ll be joined along the way by MVTANT, Auragraph, Belly Hatcher, Nuxx, and Normal Bias.
Tour Dates:
July 31 — Santa Ana, CA — La Santa — w/ MVTANT
August 1 — San Diego, CA — Casbah
August 2 — Pomona, CA — Lopez Urban Farm — w/ MVTANT
August 6 — Las Vegas, NV — Backstage — w/ MVTANT
August 7 — Phoenix, AZ — Club Contact — w/ MVTANT
August 8 — Tucson, AZ — The Rialto Theater — w/ MVTANT
August 10 — Albuquerque, NM — Longhair Records — w/ MVTANT
August 14 — San Antonio, TX — Paper Tiger — w/ Auragraph
August 15 — Denton, TX — Rubber Gloves — w/ Auragraph
August 19 — Birmingham, AL — Saturn — w/ Auragraph
August 20 — Atlanta, GA — The Drunken Unicorn — w/ Auragraph
August 21 — Knoxville, TN — Pilot Light — w/ Auragraph
August 22 — Nashville, TN — The Cobra — w/ Auragraph
August 23 — Indianapolis, IN — The 808 — w/ Auragraph
August 27 — Detroit, MI — UFO — w/ Auragraph
August 28 — Toronto, ON — BSMT 254 — w/ Belly Hatcher
August 29 — Montreal, QC — L’Escogriffe — w/ Belly Hatcher
August 30 — Syracuse, NY — The Song and Dance — w/ Nuxx
August 31 — Saratoga Springs, NY — Desperate Annie’s — w/ Nuxx
September 3 — Baltimore, MD — Metro — w/ Nuxx
September 4 — New York, NY — TV Eye — w/ Nuxx
September 5 — Philadelphia, PA — Ruba — w/ Nuxx
September 6 — Richmond, VA — Club Fallout — w/ Nuxx
September 7 — Durham, NC — The Pinhook — w/ Nuxx
September 8 — Savannah, GA — Wormhole — w/ Nuxx
September 10 — Gainesville, FL — The Atlantic — w/ Nuxx
September 11 — Orlando, FL — Iron Cow — w/ Nuxx
September 12 — Miami, FL — Las Rosas — w/ Nuxx
September 13 — Tampa, FL — New World — w/ Nuxx
September 16 — New Orleans, LA — The Crypt — w/ Nuxx
September 17 — Houston, TX — Black Magic — w/ Nuxx
September 18 — Austin, TX — Mohawk — w/ Nuxx
September 19 — Dallas, TX — Double Wide — w/ Nuxx
September 20 — Oklahoma City, OK — Resonant Head — w/ Nuxx
September 22 — Wichita, KS — Kirby’s — w/ Nuxx
September 23 — Lawrence, KS — Replay Lounge — w/ Nuxx
September 24 — Kansas City, MO — Union Library — w/ Nuxx
September 25 — St. Louis, MO — The Golden Record — w/ Nuxx
September 27 — Chicago, IL — Metro
October 2 — Salt Lake City, UT — The International — w/ Normal Bias
October 3 — Boise, ID — Realms — w/ Normal Bias
October 4 — Spokane, WA — The Chameleon — w/ Normal Bias
October 8 — Vancouver, BC — The Astoria
October 9 — Seattle, WA — Mountain Room — w/ Normal Bias
October 10 — Portland, OR — Star Theater — w/ Normal Bias
October 11 — Eugene, OR — John Henry’s — w/ Normal Bias
October 14 — Arcata, CA — Miniplex — w/ Normal Bias
October 16 — Oakland, CA — Stork Club — w/ Normal Bias
October 17 — Oxnard, CA — Mystery Shop — w/ Normal Bias
October 24 — Los Angeles, CA — TBA
Follow Spike Hellis:
Instagram
Facebook
Bandcamp
Spotify
The post “I’m Not Your Therapist” — Spike Hellis Hammer the Point Home With Old-School EBM Track “No Bite” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.