Alien Sex Fiend - Biography
Led by Nik Fiend, Alien Sex Fiend’s initial brand of music was a mix of cartoonish goth, primitive psychobilly and pulsing synthesizers. Their music and their deeply silly lyrics immediately set them apart from their humorless, black-clad peers and played up the intrinsic campiness of the scene that was all werewolf bark and no vampire bite. Like their unpretentious spiritual forebears of the early rock ‘n’ roll era, Alien Sex Fiend shone on singles. Nonetheless, full-length albums and live recordings fell like black rain. Over the long course of their existence, the band grew more adventurous, exploring and incorporating elements from many other musical genres, notably hip-hop, industrial and various forms of electronic dance. Despite it all, they remain primarily thought of as a goth band.
In the summer of 1982 in Soho, a club called The Batcave opened that soon attracted a legion of black-celebrating undead that came to be known as goths. One of them, North Londoner Nik Wade, had originally served in The Earwigs and Mr. and Mrs. Demeanor in the late ‘70s before releasing two singles as Demon Preacher and one as The Demons. After a creative rethink he teamed up with his wife, Christine Wade (aka Mrs. Fiend), guitarist Yaxi High Rizer (David James), and drummer Johnny "Ha Ha" Freshwater, joining forces as Alien Sex Fiend that winter. Their new band, christened Alien Sex Fiend, became one of the seminal bands of the scene. After good press for a nine-track demo, the band made their live debut in December at the Batcave.
What was immediately apparent was the importance of Alien Sex Fiend’s visual sensibility, with members in zombified makeup that helped make them favorites among goths. However, whereas most goths traded in irony-free miserabilism, Alien Sex Fiend’s crude, tongue-in-cheek humor and B-movie sensibility placed them musically closer to Birthday Party, The Cramps and even The B-52s than most of the bands in the scene that embraced them.
After a cassette-only The Lewd, the Mad, the Ugly and Old Nik, they were signed to Cherry Reds’ Anagram imprint. In 1983 they released the pulsing “Ignore the Machine,” a scorching number that suggested a punkified Alice Cooper fronting Suicide. Its follow-up, “Lips Can’t Go,” confirmed that technical proficiency and pretensions to artistic growth weren’t part of the band’s agenda. The debut album, Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brain (Anagram), featured somewhat more varied musical terrain, although not since T. Rex had a rock band worked and re-worked such a limited scope to such repeatedly winning effect.
Acid Bath (Anagram) followed in 1984, featuring singles like, “Dead and Buried,” “E.S.T. (Trip to the Moon),” and “R.I.P.” The music was similar to that of the predecessor, if a bit less overtly humorous and guitar-driven. However, live performances and videos showed Nik Fiend in pancake makeup crossing his eyes and still generally acting the clown even in their less obviously jokey moments. No doubt this highly expressive, theatrical approach endeared them to a surging Japanese audience who turned them into stars and formed the vijuaru kei (visual style) subculture in their wake. Alien Sex Fiend repaid their legion of Japanese fans by embarking on a sold-out tour there. The opening night resulted in the live album, Liquid Head in Tokyo. The album also proved to be drummer Johnny Ha Ha’s last appearance with the band.
Reduced to a trio, ASF recorded Maximum Security (Anagram). Though slower and uncharacteristically bleak throughout, it made the Top 100 in the UK. The standout song and more familiarly goofy single — the glammy, minimalist “I’m Doing Time in a Maximum Security Twilight Home” — closely presaged Sigue Sigue Sputnik who would achieve three Top 40 hits with a similar formula the following year.
In 1986, Alien Sex Fiend unleashed the I Walk the Line EP. The title track, though similar to previous songs, proved their most timeless single and is widely seen as their shining moment. A cover of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” paid homage to an obvious influence. All of Alien Sex Fiend’s musical ingredients are honed in perfect balance on It - the Album (Anagram), released in October just as the band embarked on tour as openers for Alice Cooper on his The Nightmare Returns tour.
One year later, the group released Here Cum Germs (1987 Anagram) with new drummer Rat Fink Jr and guitarist Doctor Milton. It featured the singles “Impossible Mission,” “Hurricane Fighter Plane,” (a cover of Red Crayola’s cult favorite) and “Stuff the Turkey.” More cut and chopped, several of the songs have a pronounced hip-hop feel that finds the band sharing musical turf with grebos Pop Will Eat Itself and Big Audio Dynamite, despite their continued (if increasingly meaningless) connection with the goth scene. After its release, Yaxi High Riser left the band due to mounting tensions.
In 1988, the husband and wife Fiends, as The Dynamic Duo, released “Batman Theme” on Riddler. Another Planet (Anagram) found Alien Sex Fiend moving in an increasingly industrial-dance direction, dominated by the Fiends and assisted by the new members. With their silliness in evidence on tracks like the Black Adder-sampling “Sample My Sausage” and covers of Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” and The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” Another Planet sounds like the punch line to Skinny Puppy. The 1989 single, “Haunted House,” signaled another new direction, with straightforward house beats paired with samples of previous singles. That year, the double live album, Too Much Acid? (Anagram) was released, made up of tracks taken from a European tour for Another Planet.
“Now I'm Feeling Zombified,” from Curse (1990 Anagram), was released in September and famously reviewed on MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head, where Butt-Head stated "It looks pretty good but, like, the sound sucks!" Despite Butt-Head’s dismissal, the song proved a minor hit. The heavy use of samples was never more in evidence and overall, it feels like a return to the grebo pastures of Here Cum Germs.
Alien Sex Fiend resurfaced in 1992 with the more commercial and organic Open Head Surgery (Anagram) featuring the Middle Eastern-tinged, blues-inflected single, “Magic.” In 1993, a live album recorded on a 1992 tour was released, Altered States of America (Anagram). It also saw the release of The Legendary Batcave Tapes (Anagram). After that they composed the score for the CD-ROM game Inferno — the Odyssey Continues (Anagram). Sometimes surprisingly chipper, the mix of ambient and almost spacesynth textures sound quite unlike anything Alien Sex Fiend had done at that point, and today sounds much more dated as well. After parting ways with Anagram, the Fiends started their own 13th Moon Records.
Again reduced to a duo, albeit with contributions from Matt Rowlands, Alien Sex Fiend’s Evolution EP (1996 13th Moon Records) moved in the direction of outright trance that continued on Nocturnal Emissions (1997 13th Moon Records). The double disc Fiend at the Controls (1998 13th Moon Records) compilation drew from more than fifteen years of material and included mostly remixes, previously unreleased tracks and interviews and an answering machine message left by David Bowie. After a long silence, Information Overload (2004 13th Moon Records) was released and is a collection of decidedly post-rave electronica that delves into jungle and even new age. Oddly, the only song where it’s unmistakably Alien Sex Fiends is their cover of The Doors’ “Five to One.”
Now- nearly thirty years on, Alien Sex Fiend produce music at a much slower rate than in their youth. Although still largely viewed as a goth band, one can never really know what to expect from their music, beyond Nik Fiend’s goofy humor and the group’s willingness to explore.
