OK. I have a shocking revelation to share with you. And there’s an easy way you can test my hypothesis. Get thee to the internet and find a recording of the Enfield Poltergeist case. In case you’re unaware, in the late 1970s, an Enfield family reported strange goings-on at their house in north London, including furniture moving, unexplained noises and poo being thrown (yes, really). One of the children began speaking in the voice of what was alleged to be a dead man, and recordings of this phenomenon still exist. Go and listen to one. I’ll wait here.
Right, all done? Now I have a question for you.
WHOSE VOICE IS THAT???It’s only Nik bleedin’ Fiend, innit? Listen to the opening track on the new Alien Sex Fiend album, Possessed, and the bit where someone says “I’m invisible”. And see if you can tell, on a first listen, whether that’s a sample of the Enfield Poltergeist or Mr Fiend’s actual voice.
Tricky, innit? BECAUSE THEY’RE THE SAME PERSON.
This isn’t music for serial killer road trips, it’s music for dropping acid in a haunted house on a wet Bank Holiday Monday. There is drizzle running all the way through this record, and it’s glorious. It’s like industrial music without the precision, all ramshackle and joyous. In this respect, Alien Sex Fiend are more actually punk than a dozen punk rock bands. But somehow it’s a formula that continues to work. In parts (“Invisible”, for example) Possessed is reminiscent of Psychic TV in their hyperdelic phase, but it’s more Hammer Horror than Crowleyan magick — if you like your fun on the dark and twisted side, and your twisted darkness on the fun side, this is the one for you.
The sound may have got a bit bigger over the years, but at heart Alien Sex Fiend are still what they always were — a hugely enjoyable bedsit rock’n’roll circus of psychedelic excess. They’re a bad trip you can dance to. They’re the Devil riding out to buy some Rizlas. They’re ace.Yes. This is indeed an album that you should (wait for it) possess. (I’m not even sorry).
-Justin Farrington-
