Alien Sex Fiend

Fiendology

A rewarding retrospective: that’s what fiends are for.

Subterraneanly subtitled

A 35-Year Trip Through Fiendish History 19822017 A.D. And Beyond, this threeCD set gambols with gothic glee through the career of an undervalued British institution.

As early birds on London’s Batcave scene Alien Sex Fiend are forever portrayed as semicomic over-the-top goths, tied to the early 80s. It’s partly their own, sporting sense of humour that has allowed others to belittle them, but outside this country’s fashion trends they’ve developed a degree of respect in territories as far-flung as Japan and the US, moving into the industrial and electronica scenes with music which is – in case you haven’t bothered to listen to them since goth’s golden age – surprisingly nimble, witty and muscular.

Their tongue-in-cheek horror imagery adorns extended grooves such as Now I’m

Feeling Zombified and I’m Doing Time In A Maximum Security Twilight Zone. These may share vocabulary with The Cramps, but their body language prefers rhythmic dance music to garage rock. Often, produced by Youth, they sound like a smarter Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and claims that they influenced The Prodigy and Sleaford Mods aren’t as daft as you might think.

Kris Needs’s vibrant sleeve notes emphasise that goth clubbing was always as much about fun as frostiness, and this romp through Mr. and Mrs. Fiend’s oeuvre confirms that.

Diehards will enjoy unreleased tracks and mixes (and two teasers from their next album), while those who only pretended to die to look cool at the Batcave will find that resurrecting one’s fondness for this ironic gloom makes deathless sense.