Most of Controlled Bleeding's released recordings feature two main collaborators, Chris Moriarty and vocalist Joe Papa, who both died in the late 2000s.

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.

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.

Additionally, in some cases, later CD issues of their original LPs are renamed, heavily remixed, or feature different tracks altogether,[2] due to the group's desire to "improve" earlier material.

Later, returning to Massapequa, New York, Lemos formed a group with old school friends, Gary Pecorino (organ) and Tony Meola (drums), and released a 7-inch EP called Wall of China Love Letter in 1980.

[6][7] 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",[8] and Chris Moriarty, a neighbor of Paul who originally filled in on drums.

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.

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.

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".

tracks would later appear on their next industrial dance album Penetration (1992, Third Mind Records), which introduced a slight hip hop influence along with updated electronic rhythms.

[15] Skin Chamber's second album, Trial (1993, Roadrunner), was recorded with a larger budget, and although it displayed a wider variety of influences and sonic textures as well as an inspired vocal appearance by Joe Papa, it was not received as favorably by fans or critics.

In 1990, compilations of songs from their career thus far were released in Italy (Gag, Material Sonori Records) and the United States (Hog Floor (A Fractured View), Subterranean).

After the cooler-than-expected reception of the second Skin Chamber album, Paul Lemos became disenchanted with industrial dance and metal, and perhaps as a result, his collaborations with Chris Moriarty slowed considerably at this time.

He went on to release a solo album, Grip Life, the next year under the band name "Body Clock", a mixed collection of musical styles which featured guest appearances by Lemos on guitar and Chris's friend Stephanie Trang Dinh on vocals.

The second reissue, Songs from the Drain (Dossier), began with three newly recorded tracks, the first of which was a demonstration of a brand new sound for Controlled Bleeding: dub music.

Their final album of this period, The Poisoner (Soleilmoon), consisted of two long dark ambient tracks, was the most soundtrack-like of any Controlled Bleeding release and featured San Diego experimental composer Guy Lohnes on processed guitar, as well as Stephanie Trang Dinh on vocals.

Straying again from the cohesion of their 1997 releases, Lemos and Papa included tracks of ambient music, dub, and free jazz-inspired live improvisation.

[18] The album includes remixes of material from The Poisoner featuring guitarist Guy Lohnes, and Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins makes a guest appearance on drums on the track "Felch Space Scan".

In early 2003, the trio of Lemos, Papa, and Yoshida released a full-length free jazz-inspired effort under the project name Breast Fed Yak called Get Your Greasy Head Off the Sham.

This release expands upon the sounds and ideas of the more chaotic, improvisational tracks on their 2002 album, and is based entirely on live instrumentation and Joe Papa's unusually rapid scat singing.

Although no new material was released after their 2003 album, Papa and Lemos made some live appearances as Breast Fed Yak in 2006, featuring Kim Abrams and Ron Anderson of PAK.

In November 2007, the vinyl-only label Vinyl on Demand issued a limited 4-LP set composed of unreleased live and studio archive material called Songs from a Sewer of Dreams.

Finally, a 4-CD compilation on Hong Kong label Ultra Mail Productions called Gibbering Canker-Opera Slaves was released in 2009, featuring both remastered cassette-only tracks and a large amount of new and old unreleased material; the track selection on this CD box set slightly overlaps the material on the LP box set Songs from a Sewer of Dreams.

(Bees (1-6) video) In 2011, Lemos formed a new trio with original drummer Tony Meola (who played drums in the very early years) and keyboardist Mike Bazini of Dystopia One, and recorded a new set of material with producer Martin Bisi (Swans, The Young Gods), which was released as "Odes to Bubbler" (Winged Disk / Soleilmoon, 2011).