Darwin would have been proud of Alien Sex Fiend, a highly successful musical organism that has resisted over 20 years worth of attempts at pigeonholing, issuing 12 barrier-breaking studio albums, 4 live albums and an arsenic-filled array of various compilations and collections in the process. Continually cited for this brazen shedding of norms, the beautifully bizarre duo of Nik Fiend and Mrs Fiend - aided by an ever-shifting squad of henchmen (the laest being Gonzo and Slice) - have yet to stand still in any zone of space and time.
What is new in Fiendland? Though it has been six somnolent years since the nativity of previous studio disc "Nocturnal Emissions," if you thought ASF had entered some form of cryogenic hibernation, you’d be dead…dead wrong. Something was brewing in their caustic cauldron, and new album "Information Overload" is IT.
In the years of Alien Sex Fiend’s quasi-dormancy, this weird world of ours had been violently altered, and this latest aural opus reflects this new Age of Chaos. Less robo-ambient and introspective than "Nocturnal Emissions," "Information Overload" is an angrier, more fangtastic Fiend…a strobe-light set to music, a waking dream of corrosive clarity and purpose. It is the sound of cable-news clickers scrolling on a thousand screens at near-subliminal speed, a mad rush to "rape and pillage in the global village" inducing a hyper-stimulated sense of opulent overload in the lucky listener---almost more Fiend than the mortal mind can encompass.
The music is harder, more stripped-down, and Mrs Fiend’s synthetic elements more relentless and devastating. Great slabs of gristly guitar are thrown into the Fiend cerebral centrifuge, spinning madly through songs like "Motherfucker Burn," as barking electro attack dogs bark out their message of "inhale, exhale, pop and turn on." The moan-mania of "Baby" makes for what is clearly the sexiest Alien Sex Fiend tune to date. If you can imagine incandescent Venusian groove things shagging in zero gravity, this is the sound they’d be jacked in to. Nik Fiend goes bonkers on "Gotta Have It," ranting his nebulous needs: "All for me! Fuck you!" Technoidal mantra-ray "Kiss Arse" grabs your reptile brain and doesn’t let go, until all eleven minutes and twenty-one seconds have done their diabolical damage. The superbly spectral "Voices in My Head" captures the surreal feel of a cyber-séance, with ghostly chorales haunting Nik’s every sonic step, while a fevered incantation of The Doors’ seminal screed "Five To One" closes things out on a classic apocalyptic note. Alien Sex Fiend are back.
Like H.R. Giger's facehugger-to-adult Alien metamorphosis in that fabled film, Alien Sex Fiend '04 aren't a different band than say, the ’97 incarnation, or the Fiends of ’94 or ’84. They are simply a more advanced form of the very same, very special beastie, genetically modified for the times.
For those in need of further mental refreshment, let us backtrack two decades to the genesis of ASF in the deep, dank mists of the early 80s. Paranormal pulsations began to emanate from the environs of London - a strange and unholy grafting together of percolating synth rhythms and a ghoulish, theatric aesthetic. Primed by Nik Fiend's phantasmagoric vocals, Mrs Fiend's highly original use of trippy drum machines and inscrutable electronic gear became a trademark - often imitated, never duplicated. Alien Sex Fiend brought attention to the notorious Batcave club in London and its subsequent scene, though the Fiends soon outgrew the genre's narrow confines. This formative period was later documented on "The Legendary Batcave Tapes" album.
Their classic 1983 debut single, the Youth-produced "Ignore The Machine" and its accompanying album, "Who's Been Sleeping In My Brain?", captured the Fiends initial burst of psychotic energy. Riveting lysergic follow up "Acid Bath" moved further into strange and spine tingling song structures, leading into the bleaker, more brooding interludes of 1985's "Maximum Security". With 1986 experimental monsterpiece "It -The Album", Alien Sex Fiend scaled unearthly peaks of creativity and/or insanity, followed by a pair of 1987 gems - "The Impossible Mission Mini LP" and hallucinogenic "Here Cum Germs" album - and era-ending singles compilation "All Our Yesterdays". In an atomic renaissance of Fiendish style, 1988's "Another Planet" charted a new course of luscious lunacy, merrily continued on 1990's chaotic "Curse" and 1992's mysterioso menagerie "Open Head Surgery".
Throughout this eerie ouvre, Alien Sex Fiend built a fanatical following for their enthrallingly garish gigs, enticing David Bowie into fervent Fiend fandom (an amusing phone call from the original Space Oddity himself is deftly dropped into "Fiend At The Controls"), and even opening for Alice Cooper on his Nightmare Returns jaunt.
Live, the ASF experience is a creature-feature cabaret with Munsterian magician Nik as ringleader, armed with his array of lethal props, and surrounded by utterly gonzo self-designed stage sets. Their tyrannical tours have been documented on four merciless live albums to date: "Liquid Head In Tokyo" (1985), epic double set "Too Much Acid?" (1989), "The Altered States Of America" (1993), and the latest, wildest "Flashbacks! (Live 1995-98)" (2001).
Not limited to aural adventures, Alien Sex Fiend have left no form of media untouched by their insidious presence. Nik Fiend has shown his sardonic Dali-esque paintings and artwork - naturally featured on each and every ASF album - to great acclaim at several art exhibitions around the globe. Videowise, Alien Sex Fiend were championed by MTV's callow creeps Beavis and Butthead, who regularly assaulted viewers with "Now I'm Feeling Zombiefied", while the Hellraiser special effects crew provided the visceral FX for "Magic". A steady stream of video (and now DVD) collections ( "A Purple Glistener", "Edit", "Overdose", "Re-Animated", "Making Of Inferno") have emanated from Fiend headquarters since their early days. Finally, Nik and Mrs Fiend found the time to produce their own yearly magazine, the ultra-wacky, ultra-witty Fiendzine "Alien World News", which have become highly prized collectors' items. In more recent years, with the advent of the internet, those particular energies have been re-directed into the band's own ever-evolving website, with the added benefits of glorious technicolour & increased fan interaction.
1994 found Alien Sex Fiend venturing where no group had gone before - into the sensory-stunning world of computer recreation. With hot sci-fi entry "Inferno - The Odyssey Continues", they became the first band in the history of our solar system to compose and record an entire CD-ROM computer game soundtrack. Although it serves a functional gaming purpose, the "Inferno" score stands on its own as a fascinating musical sonogram - an irresistible mix of man and machine, fiend and fun.
Anagram Records compilation "The Singles 1983-1995" neatly encapsulated the band's first dozen years worth of musical mayhem, including every sordidly superb single from diabolical introduction "Ignore The Machine" to the unprecedently progressive "Inferno" mixes.
The birth of Alien Sex Fiend's own 13th Moon Records, and the subsequent release of the "Evolution" singles marked the dawning of their next insane reign. Unshackled from any and all artificial boundaries, 13th Moon, has enabled the gruesome twosome to more efficiently pursue their surreal and humorously deviant vision with total and complete independence.
Surprise remained an ASF hallmark, and 1997 studio album "Nocturnal Emissions" was no exception. Their most futuristic effort, yet quintessentially Fiendish, "Nocturnal Emissions" flowed and feinted with a seamless sense of cool. It was a curvaceous cybernetic jamboree, opening with the groundbreaking single "Evolution" ,a dancefloor juggernaut full of otherworldly blips, bleeps and bastard beats, and continuing on through more elegant electronic cataracts like "Warp Out". By closing concoction "Sticky", it was obvious that the Fiends evolutionary space race was far from over, a point hammered home even harder and hipper by their subsequent triumphant entry into the world of remixing (ably demonstrated by the "Tarot Mixes" terrorific 12" single), and the audacious DJing stint as "Fiend At The Controls".
The Fiend At The Controls project led ASF to re-examine some of the cobwebbed ghosts lurking within their archives, resulting in the 1999 2-CD monsterwork "Fiend At The Controls Volume 1 & 2" ripe with the unavailable, the unreleased, and most importantly, the unexpected! Offering 26 tormented tracks of classic Fiendish hi-jinx, many out-of-print and now impossible to find in any format, "F.A.T.C" meandered wonderfully like a radio program beamed from the outer rings of Saturn. Generously spread over two potent discs, "Fiend At The Controls" illustrated the band's lovely chaos as well as their creative longevity and continuity--tracks as far apart in time as 1984's "R.I.P. (New Dub Truck)" and 1992's "Comatose (The Ultra Mix)" showed clear genetic affinities.
Which brings us back to the present, and the sardonic smorgasbord of "Information Overload.." Still mutating faster than the normal brain can comprehend, their mega-musical tentacles reaching into uncharted lands of sight, sound, and sanity, this is one Alien you won't see on the Sci-Fi Network. Nik and Mrs Fiend remain a nefarious nucleus, able to attract the finest in contributing satellites for their ravishing reverberations. "Information Overload" is only the latest launch pad for this band's ongoing exploration of new sonic terrain, a perfect potion for the 21st Century that is sure to find this fungal fantasia of a group once again refusing to stand stock still. Where exactly they will take you, the listener, only the Fiendish ones know.
Evolve or die is firmly entrenched as mantra of choice in this strange new murderous millennium. With minds expanded and samplers blazing, Alien Sex Fiend don’t show the faintest signs of extinction.
Source: http://www.asf-13thmoon.demon.co.uk/biog/biog.html |
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