Eighties Indie devils create their individual music for the post-Goth undead. Fans will lap it up - newcomers should wonder at what they missed. Try as I might I just couldn't dislike this record. As a medium-aged fogie, I had lived through the time when ALIEN SEX FIEND had been reet popular with the independent crowd. Hectic days. One week PsychoBilly would be the thing to be into, the next week it would be Indie Folk, or people like THE POGUES blending Irish Trad with shabby Punk. THE PISTOLS died, and the first (and best) wave of Punk died with it, but by then all the kids were clued into music and groups were appearing like acne on a randy teenager's face - each day there'd be more spot on an increasingly less defined mug. And as mugshots go, NIK FIEND's was both disturbing and somehow too quirky to be taken seriously. A comedy horror figure, you couldn't seem to get away from his image for long. Now, some years on, I come to reconsider their music. Silly titles, daft toilet humour lyrics, but the music - a sorta Rockabilly Punk would often smoulder, and on occasion explode into an uncontrollable conflagration. Tracks like "Hurricane Fighter Plane", "Drive My Rocket", "Back To The Egg" & "Now I'm Feeling Zombiefied" (with it's STOOGES-like chorus), "Attack", "I Walk The Line" cut the mustard, but couldn't push them beyond the groundswell zeitgeist groups. Whereas "Nightmare Zone" (a touch of the CHROMEs in there) could scald the listener with steaming hot dance music. The Goth tag the earned themselves can be heard on tracks like "Isolation". And "Sample My Sausage" has a strong sense of humour to it which actually converts well. What is really sad about this record (and isn't really their fault) is the early, naive use of samplers which almost totally lacks subtlety, but thank goodness this only pops up on a couple of tracks. Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.