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Alien Sex Fiend - Here Cum Germs (PVC,
1987) |
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Alien Sex Fiend proper (after a short stint as mouthful
Mr and Mrs
Demeannout) formed in ’82, one of the many bands that grew from the
Batcave, the legendary London proto-goth nightclub where flash metal
creeps Specimen were the house band and where the Sisters of Mercy, the
(Southern Death) Cult, the Cure, Bauhaus, Nick Cave, the certified
flash disco suicides
Soft Cell, and many other notable creatures of the night played, and hung
out, and did whatever kinda drugs vampires do. Goth hadn’t actually been
invented yet, which is why all those bands ended up bein’ seminal- they
were making it up as they went along, and pretty much all they had to go
on was they all liked Bowie and the Sweet and Bela Lugosi. Which is
plenty, it turns out. ASF released their first single, “Ignore the Machine”, in 1983 (Anagram records). It was produced by Killing Joke main-man Youth (who, in 1991, formed the ill-fated techno-sleaze band “Zodiac Youth” with Zodiac Mindwarp), and had plenty of airplay on college radio at the time. |
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Matter
of fact, if yer over 30, you surely remember it. Over a bare-bones drum
beat (courtesy Johnny Ha Ha, natch) and a stuttering punk rock guitar, a
crazed Nik shouts “Everybody wants, what everybody’s got/and everybody’s
got, what everybody wants!” You remember it, right? ______________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Anyway, although hardly goth in the musical sense, their Alice Cooper-ish stage-show and their glamtronica-meets fuzzpunk sound caught on with the batwing kids. They NEVER got to operate on the level or their peers, whose black hair dye and suicide drone poems were catching on with lonely teenage girls with self-esteem problems all over the world, and making ‘em all a buncha mopey millionaires, but despite tiny budgets, ASF poured it on, man, with zombie make-up and stages covered in spiderwebs and their crazy, bubbling blood circus freakwave. Albums followed- ‘83’s “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brain”, and ‘84’s brain-boiling “Acid Bath” (featuring the whacked-out goth-club hit “In God We Trust (In Cars You Rust)”, another one you probably remember – “The skin is stretched, the skin is blue!”) established Alien Sex Fiend as the closest you could possibly get to a real life Addams Family. In ’84 a mesmerizing live video, “A Purple Glistener” (Jettisoundz) was released, as was another obscure vid, “Live at the Perkins Palace”, shot in LA, where the band’s comic book ghoul shtick was apparently lost on the punters (“Nobody ever came into the dressing room. In Los Angeles they think we're cannibals!”- Nik Fiend, Beatbox magazine, 1985). |
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But no matter. The visual evidence –
rail-thin Fiend vamping it up as a twitching mess of
short-circuiting wires-made-flesh in a haze of green smoke, the Missuz cool and beautiful
behind him, pumping out haunted-house lullabies on her synth- was as
compelling and exciting as any of the spandex superstars that were
actually from LA, and I don’t think anybody was ever afraid that Motley Crue were actually gonna chop them to bits and hang their guts onstage
like streamers.
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Alien Sex Fiend experienced a shake-up in
1985 when original member Johnny
Ha Ha split, but he was soon replaced- with a drum machine. The band also
changed musical direction, into a more ethereal, droning mode, for ‘85’s
“Maximum Security” album, but amped their sound up by like, a thousand,
with ‘86’s “It Lives Again”. Although that album still had it’s share of
drone epics, it also featured the twin flash
metal-cum-creep-disco-cum-white-dopes-on-punk mesterpieces “Hurricane
Fighter Plane” and the monstrous title track. Sensing that they mighta
finally stumbled on a sound suitable for flash metal obsessed Yank
audiences, both of these tracks – and some of “Here Cum Germs” tracks,
were sutured together for ‘87’s “Impossible Mission” EP, a US-only
release. I dunno if the ploy worked on anybody else or not, but it sure
the fuck converted the Teenage Sleazegrinder. I’m not sure if “Here Cum Germs” (another US-only release) came before or after the EP, but I suppose it hardly matters. What does matter is that they dropped the fucker into the laps of teenage America at the height of the flash metal era, to see if they could handle it. They couldn’t, really, and I’m pretty sure teenage America STILL might not be able to handle the crazy man’s Utopia that is this record. Chalk it up as a Flash Metal Suicide for ‘em to even try. Still, this record remains, easily, one of the best releases of ’87. |
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“Coming through the window /Coming through the door /Living underneath the floor Underneath the sink /They're underneath the sink Now what do you think /Living under my sink?” Who the fuck writes lyrics like this? Toss in a confusing chorus (“Peace and love is a silly thing!”) and you’ve got a real mind-bender, Jack. A mindbender you can dance to, even. “Isolation” is one o’ ASF’s droners, ya know, the kinda suicide dirge (“The body feels good/the body feels blue/it could be me/I rather it was you”) yr bound to write after hanging out with goth-kids for so long. Good for taking pills you can’t identify. |
| Side one closer “My Brain is in the Cupboard, Above the Kitchen Sink” is a monster. It’s a corrosive glam-punk tune, featuring an acid-drenched Garry Glitter-cum-Link Wray riff and hand-claps care of the drum machine, and that’s pretty much it, aside from Nik’s howling and carrying on about his missing brain (“It’s not in my head, so I don’t have to think!”), but it’s simplicity belies it’s ability to rock like a motherfucker. One of my favorite songs ever, and certainly one of the best of the era, which is remarkable, since I’m pretty sure Nik wrote it as he went along. | |
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Side one only hinted that Alien Sex Fiend was quite mad- side two proves
it, inconclusively, with a trio of tracks that escalate in length and
dementia as they roll on. “You Are Soul” is five minutes of
bubblegum-flash metal riffs, disco beats, and ranting. It sounds like
Tony
James forcing Hanoi Rocks to play space-metal, at gun-point. It’s pretty fuckin’ boss, man. “Death” is 11 minutes of wormy bass new-wavey synth plinkings, thudding drumbeats, and a dive-bombing goth metal riff, as Nik narrates yr journey to the after-life in a PIL-era Lydon-esque bored snarl. “Where is it that we’re going? Will it be hot, or will it be snowing? Death!” It ends, eventually, in a swirl of metallic noise. Madness. Closer “Boots On” is 23 minutes long. “I don’t mind sleeping with my boots on, in the summertime” is pretty much the only discernable lyric. Otherwise, Nik appears to be ranting to himself, (“I’ve got 14 animal heads, I wear my hat when I go to bed”) as if he didn’t even know the tape was rolling. I’m not sure if any of them knew the tape was rolling, because the music pretty much consists of two drum machines barking at each other. |
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It ends the only way it possible could,
in the Reagan daze: “It’s the end of the world. Boo hoo. It’s the end of the fuckin’ world, and nobody cares.” End of the record, too. But certainly not the end of Alien Sex Fiend. They are still together- just released a new album, “Information Overload”, too. Nik runs their own label, 13th Moon, and sells re-releases of all the ASF stuff, including their twisted 80’s videos, now on DVD. If you haven’t been zombified yet, then yr missing out on one of rock n’ roll’s greatest freakscenes. I tell you this much- I don’t know what I woulda done in 1987 without ‘em. We didn’t ALL love fuckin’ Whitesnake, ya know. Further: Alien Sex Fiend official Website -Sleazegrinder, who sleeps with his boots on |
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