“I’m Not Your Therapist” — Spike Hellis Hammer the Point Home With Old-School EBM Track “No Bite”

    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.

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