[1] Two of their singles, "Greater Reward" (1988) and "All Saints Day" (1989), reached the top 30 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart.

Wright departed late in 1979, leaving the duo of Ellard and Fielding to put together the band's early studio offerings, including the A-side of a split album, Ear Bitten/No Vowels, No Bowels, with the B-side by Rhythmyx Chymx.

[3][5] Severed Heads began incorporating various popular music tropes, such as a consistent 4/4 rhythm, strong melodic lines, resolving chord arrangements and Ellard's thin but gently eerie vocals and elliptical, poetic lyrics.

The group moved their live shows from "experimental venues and art spaces to rock clubs",[5] and they issued the Blubberknife and 80's Cheesecake albums in 1982 after expanding to include synthesiser player Garry Bradbury and guitarist Simon Knuckey.

AllMusic's John Bush described the album as not "quite a crossover effort" with the lead single, "Dead Eyes Opened", being "surprisingly melodic synth-pop".

[7] The band's recording deals led to a world tour, which became a multimedia event with the addition of video synthesisers performed by Jones.

In October that year, Jon Casimir of the Canberra Times described the group as "Australia's most innovative electronic band", which had an "obsession with the ugly and horrific" with music "reminiscent of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle.

[3] The Canberra Times' Kathryn Whitfield felt the group had "gone way beyond experimental" to provide "a commercially viable product" while Ellard reflected "we have just worked carefully and solidly in an area that we think is good".

19 in the United States on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart in 1988 with the 12-inch single "Greater Reward", which later appeared on the album Rotund for Success, issued in October 1989.

Around this time, the band had a major Australian hit with a remixed version of "Dead Eyes Opened", which samples Edgar Lustgarten reading from Death on the Crumbles.

By 2004, he was heavily involved with developing video but increasingly felt that the Severed Heads label was a thing of the past, and in 2008 opted to jettison the name.

Ellard also worked extensively during the 1990s with other Sydney-based electronic musicians and groups such as Paul Mac (of Itch-E and Scratch-E) and Boxcar, former alumni of the now-defunct Volition label, as well as with the Lab.

In a May 2011 interview, Tom Ellard explained: "Some people thought it was a bit rude of me to just shut it down without a proper farewell tour and so we decided we would drag it out just one more time and say our toodly-doodly's.

[15] However, Ellard and Lawler performed what was again intended to be a final gig at the Queen's Theatre during the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 2013, a concert that was recorded by Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

2016 saw the release of the Beautiful Arabic Surface 10" acetate dub plate, which contained the first newly recorded Severed Heads tracks since their announced hiatus in 2008.

A relationship was formed between the bands which led to Severed Heads being signed to Nettwerk Records and a joint 1986 North American tour.