Controlled Bleeding

Controlled Bleeding was an experimental music group based in Massapequa, New York. The group was founded by Paul Lemos, the group's only consistent member. Most of Controlled Bleeding's released recordings feature two main collaborators, Chris Moriarty and vocalist Joe Papa, who both died in the late 2000s. In February 2020 Lemos announced that the band had dissolved.
Since their first full-length release in 1983, Controlled Bleeding released over 30 albums spanning several different genres, many of which were released on notable independent labels. Their cross-genre approach combined with the out-of-print status of many of the group's releases is reminiscent of the work of other experimental and cross-genre groups of the 80s and 90s such as Coil and Swans.

Recorded output

Controlled Bleeding have been highly prolific since 1983, putting out more than 30 full-length releases on labels such as Dossier, Wax Trax!, Subterranean, Soleilmoon, and Roadrunner. Due to the broad musical interests of the main collaborators, as well as the influence of the band's relationships with genre-focused labels like Wax Trax! and Roadrunner, Controlled Bleeding's total recorded output spans many different genres including harsh noise, dub, progressive rock, industrial dance, metal, gothic, darkwave, classical, sacred music, ambient, free jazz improvisation, and musique concrète. Through the 80s and 90s, the group jumped from genre to genre; they would often release two or more full-length albums of music in the same year featuring radically different musical styles.
Controlled Bleeding's music is difficult to categorize, not only because of the experimental and varied nature of their work, but also because of the confusing ways in which their music has been released over the years. Some of the band's releases are made of remixed earlier material from multiple other releases, sometimes with new or missing song titles. The band's full-length releases occasionally contain material that jumps abruptly between multiple disparate genres; most strikingly, tracks of harsh noise appear on releases that are otherwise not noise-based. Additionally, in some cases, later CD issues of their original LPs are renamed, heavily remixed, or feature different tracks altogether, due to the group's desire to "improve" earlier material.

Early trio: 1978–1980

Controlled Bleeding was originally formed in Boston around 1978 by Paul Lemos, Jack Salerno and Dave Southerland. Later, returning to Massapequa, New York, Lemos formed a group with old school friends, Gary Pecorino and Tony Meola, and released a 7-inch EP called Wall of China Love Letter in 1980. This early incarnation played a kind of progressive-influenced art rock.
Music from these early years was issued on several of Controlled Bleeding's later releases. An LP called Lung Ties which documented some of this trio's live and studio recordings was released on Eksakt Records in 1985 under the band name "Body Sink". The 1994 reissue of Songs from the Ashes includes three bonus tracks of live recordings of the Lemos/Pecorino/Meola trio playing at the New York City club CBGB. In 2008, Controlled Bleeding released Before the Quiet, which consists of many of the Lung Ties LP tracks along with more 1978–1981 archive material. Some of this material is also included on the 4-LP box set Songs from a Sewer of Dreams, released in 2007.

Experimental phase: 1983–1988

By 1982 or 1983, Pecorino and Meola had left the group, and were replaced by two new musical collaborators: Joe Papa, a "300-pound scat-singing eccentric", and Chris Moriarty, a neighbor of Paul who originally filled in on drums. Paul Lemos met Joe Papa after putting an ad in a local music paper in search of a singer. From late 1983 until Moriarty's departure in 1994, all Controlled Bleeding releases featured at least Papa or Moriarty, and usually both.
The next four years of Controlled Bleeding's output strayed from the previous trio's art rock leanings into more experimental areas. During 1983 and 1984, the band released a series of live-to-two-track cassettes via labels like Inner-X-Musick, Broken Flag, and Ladd-Frith which featured layered, harsh industrial noise, sometimes mixed with guitar and Joe Papa's vocal work. In February 1985, the band's first full-length LP, Knees and Bones, was released by Hans Fahlberg on his Sweden-based record label Psychout Productions, featuring a particularly harsh wall of sound similar to the work of other American and Japanese harsh noise artists.
Their second LP, Body Samples, was completed in April 1985 and released on Germany's Dossier Records. Although most of the tracks on the album featured harsh sounds similar to their first LP, Body Samples also had more layered, textural moments, including melodic synthesizer-based ambience and primal drumming. According to the liner notes in the 1990 CD reissue of Body Samples, the layered approach on some tracks was due to the group's acquisition of a four-track reel-to-reel recorder, which gave the band more freedom than their previous live-to-cassette recording methods. Also during 1985, the band released Feet Hacked Rails on Dossier under the pseudonym "The Art Barbeque", which strayed further from noise into more melodic and rhythmic territory; some of the material from Feet Hacked Rails appears on the 1990 CD reissue of Body Samples, along with some tracks from the earlier cassette-only release Shitslipper.
In 1986 and 1987, Controlled Bleeding released five more full-length LPs: Curd, Headcrack, Between Tides, Core, and Songs from the Drain. Paul Lemos has stated that these releases contain music made by the band throughout 1984–1987, so an exact chronology of the material made during this time period is not known. Beginning with Curd, the band left the distortion-heavy noise of their previous releases behind in favor of a more varied experimental approach. Core is notable as the first Controlled Bleeding vinyl LP to be released by a label based in the United States, although some of the group's early cassettes and compilations were released stateside a few years earlier.
Headcrack is the first record released by Controlled Bleeding that demonstrates the classical/medieval/sacred music influences which would reappear throughout their discography, and the album features Joe Papa's wordless vocals more prominently than any previous release. A similar sound to Headcrack was also featured on Music for Stolen Icons, a 12-inch EP released by the band on Sub Rosa in 1986 under the name "Paul Lemos & Joe Papa".
In 1988 and 1989, the band released two LPs on the Belgian label Sub Rosa, Music from the Scourging Ground and Music for Gilded Chambers. These LPs continued the band's exploration of medieval and sacred music and mixed it with soundtrack-like ambient passages. Also, most notably, these were the first two Controlled Bleeding albums to feature songs with lyrics. These two releases were remixed and combined for the US CD-only release Songs from the Ashes.

Availability on CD

Some of the band's first nine LPs were later issued on CD in various forms. Some of the original tracks were not included in the CD versions, and some material was remixed and/or edited.

Album	LP issue	CD reissue	Notes
Knees and Bones	1985, Dossier	1997, Dossier	Remastered with the original LP as one long track, and includes two outtakes.
Body Samples	1985, Dossier	1990, Dossier	Mastered with a majority of the original side A and side B as tracks 2 and 3, and includes material from Feet Hacked Rails and other extra material on tracks 1 and 4. Missing "Intro. In the Factory" and "Bulges Fakes" from the vinyl version, and also missing the music material at the end of side A.
Curd	1986, Dossier	1991, Dossier	The reissued version contains some remixed and edited tracks from Curd, interspersed with 3 tracks from Core and 3 previously unreleased tracks.
Headcrack	1986, Sterile	1994, Dark Vinyl	9 of the original 11 tracks from Headcrack were heavily edited and remixed, interspersed with the Music for Stolen Icons 12-inch ep and two unreleased tracks, and released as Songs from the Vault. Tracks 5 and 10 from Headcrack were not included.
Between Tides	1986, Multimood	1998, Multimood	Remixed and includes bonus material. Track titles on the CD version are in correct order but the track numbering is off by one after track 3. As of 2011, the group consider the CD version to be "ruined" and prefer the original vinyl version.
Core	1987, Subterranean	-	Other than the three tracks included on the 1991 reissue of Curd and the two tracks included on the Gag compilation, Core was not issued on CD.
Songs from the Drain	1987, Dossier	1994, Dossier	Remixed and remastered, with three introductory bonus tracks and three bonus tracks of the band live at CBGB, 1979 or 1980.
Music from the Scourging Ground	1988, Sub Rosa	1989, KK Records	The CD version is remixed and resequenced, and features one bonus track, the complete version of "In Drowning Hands". The remixed versions also appear on Songs from the Ashes.
Music for Gilded Chambers	1989, Sub Rosa	1990, C'est La Mort	Six of the original nine tracks were remixed and included on Songs from the Ashes; the other three tracks re-appeared on Trudge and Gag.