So... I think we should just start by reading
out the official Apple Podcast title and description
we put together for this because it really sets
the stage perfectly. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Go
for it. OK, so the title for this deep dive is
Unpacking the Madness, a deep dive into alien
sex fiends, it's the album. I love that. Unpacking
the Madness is pretty much exactly what we're
about to do. Right. And the description goes
like this. Ever wondered what happens when an
underground 1980s rock band takes complete creative
Control, paints their own album cover, and drops
a 13 -minute track called Manic Depression. In
this custom deep dive, we explore the wild release
history, format -shifting quirks, and mind -expanding
track list of Alien Sex Fiend's 1986 masterpiece,
It's the Album. It really is a masterpiece of
just breaking all the rules. It really is. The
description continues. From the bizarre decision
to attach a whole previous album to the cassette
release, to decoding the band's relentless year
-by -year output, we extract the hidden gems
of music history from a single Wikipedia source.
Whether you're a vinyl aficionado, a physical
media nerd, or just wildly curious about creative
boundaries, join us as we unpack the why and
how behind this obscure but fascinating undertaking.
That covers all the bases. And I mean, it hits
all those key ideas we want to talk about. Alien
Sex Fiend, the album, 1986 rock albums, physical
media evolution, cassette culture. Yeah, CD reissues,
the Trouser Press music review, post -punk history,
DIY album art, Nick Fiend himself. It's all in
there. It's a lot to get through, but it's such
a rich topic. It really is. So welcome to the
deep dive, everyone. We are looking at a single,
relatively sparse Wikipedia page today, but what's
buried within its track lists and footnotes is
basically a masterclass in breaking the rules
of the music industry. It's a brilliant case
study, really. what immediately strikes me about
this document is that it functions as a snapshot
of a highly transitional era. Yeah, totally.
And not just for this specific band, but for
the entire ecosystem of music consumption. In
1986, the physical formats were essentially at
war with one another. Right. You had the old
guard and the new tech colliding. Exactly. Vinyl
was the established prestigious canvas. Then
the cassette tape was the dominant, highly democratized
consumer format. And the compact disc was this
emerging technology promising limitless uninterrupted
digital audio. It was the Wild West for audio
format. It really was. Yeah. So when we analyze
this album, we are actually watching a group
of artists collide with these shifting tectonic
plates of technology. The source material lays
out these distinct versions, the vinyl, the cassette,
the CD, and each format fundamentally alters
the artistic statement being made. That format
collision is exactly why this source is so compelling
to me. You look at the page, and it's not just
one album. It's a morphing piece of art depending
on how you physically bought it at the store.
Depending entirely on the plastic container it
came in. Exactly. But before we get into the
tapists and the digital reissues, I mean, we
have to establish the human element driving this
machine. The article introduces us to the core
personnel here. We have Nick Wade. who operates
under the brilliant moniker Nick Fiend. Great
name. Such a great name. And Christine Wade.
And if we look at the discography section at
the very bottom of the page, it paints a picture
of a band operating with a relentless, almost
punishing work ethic. The timeline is the first
major indicator that we are dealing with a highly
unusual creative force here. Right. Let's look
at the dates. So if we track their studio releases
according to the source, they debut with Who's
Been Sleeping in My Brain in 1983. Okay, 1983.
They followed immediately with Acid Bath in 1984.
Then comes Maximum Security in 1985. And then
the focal point of our discussion today. It,
the album. Released in October 1986. That is
four full -length studio albums in four consecutive
years. Four years, four albums. It's an incredible
pace. It's a level of stamina that kind of forces
you to reevaluate how modern music is made today.
Oh, absolutely. The modern landscape is completely
different. Today the standard industry cycle
is characterized by long periods of silence.
An artist releases a project, they tour it for
a year, they retreat, they spend two years writing.
Maybe teasing a few singles along the way. Right,
and maybe on the fourth year we see a highly
manicured rollout. Alien sex fiend completely
bypasses that preciousness. They are operating
like a newsroom, putting out an annual report
on their own sonic evolution. Operating like
a newsroom is a really great analogy because
it implies urgency. In the mid -80s underground
rock scene, particularly in the UK, that urgency
was basically a survival mechanism. You had to
stay in the conversation. You had to stay visible.
But beyond the mere logistics of staying relevant,
A one -year album cycle requires an immense amount
of unedited raw output. You just don't have the
time to second -guess yourself. No, you don't
have the luxury of over -analyzing a mix or spending
six months debating a snare sound. You write
the material, you capture the visceral energy
of that specific moment in time, you commit it
to wax, and you immediately pivot to the next
project. It suggests a band that is operating
purely on instinct. momentum. Pure momentum.
And yet, as much as we can marvel at that momentum,
the Wikipedia page itself introduces a fascinating
little crack in the historical record here. Oh,
the timeline discrepancy. Yes. I want to draw
your attention to a discrepancy in the text because
it's so funny. In the chronology info box at
the top right of the article, it lists maximum
security in 1985, the album in 1986, and then
it states their next release is Here Come Germs
in 1988. Which implies a gap year. Right. It
implies they finally took a breath, had a gap
year in 1987, maybe slept for a few months. But
if you scroll down to the actual discography
list at the bottom of the exact same page...
It explicitly lists Here Come Germs as a 1987
release. Exactly. Followed by Another Planet
in 1988. So the page contradicts itself. It is
a wonderful contradiction. And honestly, it's
highly representative of the inherent flaws in
documenting underground music. We are looking
at a centralized, crowdsourced encyclopedia that
cannot definitively agree on the release year
of an album within its own text. It completely
reframes how we trust digital archives. It really
does. You have to ask yourself... Did the sheer
physical and creative exhaustion of writing,
recording, and touring four albums in 48 months
finally catch up to Nick and Christine Wade?
Did it force them to pause in 1987? Or did they
maintain that furious streak and this discrepancy
is simply a casualty of poor 1980s indie label
record keeping migrating poorly to the internet?
I mean, what's your take? Given the sheer velocity
of their early career, the latter seems entirely
plausible. Independent labels like Anagram Records
weren't necessarily prioritizing the kind of
meticulous, globally synchronized metadata that
major labels use today. They were just trying
to get the records pressed and into the shops.
Exactly. Release dates in the underground were
often fluid. An album might be finished in late
87, but not physically distributed to certain
shops until early 88. So the paperwork just gets
messy. Very messy. The fact that the source contains
this unresolved tension highlights how ephemeral
this era of music history really is. The exact
chronological boundaries blur, but the evidence
of their prolific, unrelenting output remains
the central takeaway. That independent ethos,
the idea of operating outside the meticulous
machinery of major labels, brings us to a detail
in the content section that I find deeply compelling.
The artwork. Yes. There is a single sentence
regarding the visual presentation of It the Album
that recontextualizes the entire project for
me. The source notes, the album cover was painted
by frontman Nick Fiend. That is such a critical
piece of information. It really is. When the
frontman is physically taking paint to a canvas
to dictate the visual identity of the music,
you are looking at a totalizing artistic vision.
Because in the 1980s, the visual packaging of
an album was almost always delegated. Oh, heavily
delegated. Labels had dedicated art departments.
Or they hired expensive, trendy graphic designers
to ensure the product looked commercially viable
on a record store shelf. They wanted a specific
glossy look to sell units. Right. So for Nick
Fien to bypass that entire apparatus and produce
the artwork himself is a profound assertion of
control. It completely changes the psychological
relationship between the listener and the physical
object. Think about what it means to hold a 12
by 12 inch piece of cardboard in your hands,
knowing that the brushstrokes you're looking
at were executed by the exact same person who
is currently screaming or playing guitar through
your speakers. The cover is no longer just a
marketing container. Exactly. It is a direct
unfiltered extension of the auditory experience.
It's all bleeding from the same source. It establishes
an immediate intimate trust with the audience.
And that desire for absolute control extends
directly into the sonic architecture of the album
as well. Let's talk about the production. The
production credits provided in the source are
equally telling. The album is produced by Alien
Sex Fiend themselves, alongside Pete McGee, and
released on Anagram Records. Even the name Anagram
Records feels perfectly suited to this whole
vibe. How so? Well, think about what an anagram
is. It takes an established set of letters, a
known structure, and scrambles them into something
entirely new and slightly disorienting. That
seems to be exactly what this band is doing with
the concept of a rock album. That is a great
observation. It's a very fitting label name for
a self -produced project. Self -production in
this era, especially for an underground band,
meant assuming a massive technical and creative
burden. You aren't just walking into a studio
and letting a famous producer sculpt your to
fit the radio format of the day. No, you are
the one deciding how abrasive the guitar should
be. You're deciding how far back in the mix the
vocals should sit, how the drums are equalized
to create a specific atmosphere. You own all
the successes and all the mistakes. Exactly.
When you combine the self -painted cover with
the self -produced audio, you have an autorist
approach. The band isn't compromising. They are
building a self -contained world. And the architecture
of that world becomes incredibly daunting when
we look at how they actually structured the track
list. This is where it gets really interesting.
Let's dive into the physical reality of playing
this record in October 1986. The primary canvas
is the two -sided vinyl LP. Right. And the source
gives us a total runtime of 46 minutes and three
seconds. To really understand the audacity of
this album, we need to slow down and meticulously
decode Side A. Because the pacing here is a deliberate
descent into something very heavy and very challenging.
The sequencing of Side A is a masterclass in
challenging the listener's expectations. I mean,
a standard commercial album of this era would
typically frontload the A -side with the most
accessible radio -friendly tracks. Always. You
want to immediately hook the... consumer before
they decide to take the record off the turntable.
Alien sex fiend completely inverts that logic.
The record opens with a track titled Smells Like.
and the source lists its runtime at five minutes
and 49 seconds. Right out of the gate, nearly
six minutes just to establish the opening argument
of the album. It's a slow, deliberate pacing
that forces you to recalibrate your attention
span. They are telling you up front, this is
not going to be a collection of quick, digestible
pop singles. And Smells Like is merely the warning
shot because the second track on side A is the
absolute focal point of the entire record. This
is the one. Track two is Manic Depression, and
the runtime is a staggering 13 minutes and 13
seconds. This is where the structural rules of
a rock album are just completely thrown out the
window. A 13 -minute track on an album that only
runs 46 minutes in total. To truly grasp the
magnitude of that decision, we have to consider
the physical limitations of the vinyl medium
itself. Let's break that down for people who
might not be super familiar with pressing vinyl.
Sure. So a single side of a 12 inch record can
comfortably hold about 22 to 24 minutes of audio
before you start encountering severe compromises
in sound quality. Things like inner groove distortion.
Exactly. Inner groove distortion, loss of low
end frequencies, lowered overall volume. So by
dedicating 13 minutes and 13 seconds seconds
to a single song, Manic Depression is consuming
more than half of the physical real estate on
Side A. It would literally dominate the visual
surface of the record. It would. When you pull
the vinyl out of the sleeve, that single groove
would look like a massive dark canyon taking
up most of the disc. It is a massive allocation
of resources, both physical and emotional. And
the title itself, Manic Depression, provides
a crucial context for that length. Right. The
band isn't just writing a long song for the sake
of self -indulgence or jamming. The extreme runtime
likely mirrors the clinical, grueling, and oscillating
nature of the psychological state they are describing.
You cannot neatly resolve the concept of manic
depression in a neat three minute verse chorus
structure. It requires time to build to sustain
tension and quite frankly to exhaust the listener.
It demands an intense level of commitment. If
you drop the needle on side A, you are essentially
trapped in that sonic environment. You sit through
the nearly six minute opener and then you are
plunged into this 13 minute monolith. And the
side finally closes out with, believe it or not,
which sits at four minutes and 40 seconds. When
we view Side A in its entirety, just three tracks
spanning roughly 24 minutes, it becomes clear
that this is designed as an immersive, continuous
piece of atmospheric world building. It is heavy,
it is brooding, and it requires the listener
to sit still and endure the weight of it. They
have engineered a deeply specific psychological
space. But the brilliance of the album and the
part that gives you absolute structural whiplash
happens when that needle hits the center label
on side A. Because you are forced to physically
interact with the medium. Right. You have to
pick up the record, you flip it over side B,
you drop the needle again, and the band completely
shatters the heavy brooding atmosphere they just
spent 24 minutes building. The sequencing of
Side B is fascinating because it initially tricks
the listener into thinking the long -form endurance
test is going to continue. It's a total fake
out. You flip the record, expecting perhaps a
shift in tempo, but the opening track of Side
B is April Showers, clocking in at 9 minutes
and 15 seconds. It's brilliant misdirection.
You think, OK, we are back in the marathon. Another
massive sprawling epic. But the moment April
Showers ends, the dam completely breaks. The
rest of Side B is sequenced like a rapid fire
punk assault. The contrast is incredibly stark.
Following that nine minute opener, we are suddenly
hit with a sequence of four tracks that are entirely
different in their structural DNA. Let's read
through them. We get Watt Bob at 3 .42. Get into
it at 3 .43. Lesson one at 3 .35. And do it right.
at 5 .03. Just reading those titles out loud
completely shifts the energy in the room. Wop
-op, get into it, do it right. These are aggressive,
kinetic, almost instructional titles. They imply
movement, friction, and immediate gratification.
Which is the exact polar opposite of a title
like Manic Depression. This raises an important
question about album sequencing. How do you maintain
momentum? It creates a deeply dynamic listening
experience here. You endure the slow psychological
weight of the A -side, you wade through the nine
-minute opening of the B -side, and then the
band essentially releases all the built -up tension
in a burst of shorter, punchier, high -velocity
tracks. It shows a really sophisticated understanding
of album pacing. You can't sustain a 13 -minute
atmosphere indefinitely. Eventually, you have
to break the tension, and they do it with this
barrage of shorter songs. It's like they held
their breath for the entire first... to half
of the album, and side B is the explosive exhale.
That's a perfect way to describe it. But as kinetic
and chaotic as that sequence is, it all leads
to the single most bizarre and theatrical choice
on the entire track list. Oh, the closer. The
final song on it, the album is titled To Be Continued,
and the source notes, it is exactly 42 seconds
long. Ending a 46 -minute, structurally complex,
emotionally taxing album with a 42 -second fragment
is a fascinating subversion of the medium. It
feels inherently cinematic to me. Like a serialized
television show cutting to black right at the
climax of the episode. Exactly. It completely
denies the listener the traditional catharsis
of an album closer. The standard convention of
a rock album is to end on a grand sweeping statement.
Or maybe a slow, acoustic fade -out that gently
transitions the listener back into reality. Alien
Sex Fiend rejects that entirely. By ending on
a 42 -second cliffhanger explicitly titled, To
Be Continued, they are playfully antagonizing
the audience. They are leaving you suspended
and mid -air. It's a structural joke that practically
demands you go back to the record store and purchase
their next release just to find out how the thought
concludes. It shows a band that is highly self
-aware, playing with the format of the vinyl
as if it were a comic book or a serial film.
That acute awareness of the format is the perfect
segue into what might be the most mind -blowing
aspect of this entire Wikipedia page. Oh, the
format wars. This is where it gets insane. We've
spent all this time breaking down the tightly
curated 46 -minute experience of the vinyl LP.
But the source material outlines the release
history across different physical media. And
this is where the limitations of 1980s technology
forced the band to make incredibly surreal decisions.
Let's talk about the cassette release, which
the source tells us was literally titled It The
Cassette. The naming convention alone is delightful
in its bluntness. It is very on the nose. But
the reality of what was contained on that cassette
is a phenomenal artifact of music industry economics.
To understand the gravity of this, we have to
talk about the physical properties of magnetic
tape. Please do, because this is wild. In the
1980s, the standard blank cassette formats were
the C60 holding 30 minutes per side and the C90
holding 45 minutes per side. And since the album
is 46 minutes and three seconds long, it creates
an immediate logistical nightmare for a cassette
manufacturer. Right, you can't fit it on a 45
-minute C90 without cutting something. Which
they obviously wouldn't want to do. And... If
you use a longer tape or split the 46 minutes
across two sides of a C60, you end up with roughly
23 minutes of music on side 1 and 23 minutes
on side 2. Which leaves you with immense stretches
of blank, silent magnetic tape at the end of
each side. Exactly. In the cassette era, dead
space was a major annoyance for consumers. You
would finish listening to the music and then
you would be forced to either sit in hissing
silence for seven or eight minutes or manually
fast -forward the tape until the mechanism clicked
just so you could flip it over and play the other
side. It was a huge friction point in the user
experience. A massive friction point. To solve
this friction point, Anagram Records and the
band make a decision that is almost unfathomable
in today's highly monetized, streaming -driven
industry. The source explicitly states that the
1986 cassette version included the band's entire
previous 1985 album, Maximum Security. They literally
just stapled their last record onto the leftover
tape. They just slapped it on there. It is an
absurdly generous solution to a physical manufacturing
problem. But it also speaks volumes about how
independent bands viewed their own catalogs in
the mid -80s. Maximum Security was barely a year
old. In today's landscape, a one -year -old album
is still heavily promoted. It's heavily curated
and monetized as a distinct entity. But for Alien
Sex Fiend, operating at a furious album -a -year
pace, their 1985 release was already the past.
It had become utilitarian. They were willing
to use a full -length studio album simply as
filler material to solve a formatting quirk for
their new release. It fundamentally changes what
the consumer is buying. You walk into a shop
in 1986, you buy the new 46 -minute alien sex
fiend album on tape, and you walk out with a
sprawling 90 -minute double album experience
entirely by accident. The physical container,
the plastic shell, and the magnetic tape literally
dictated the boundaries of the art the consumer
received. And that idea that the container dictating
the art becomes even more pronounced when we
look at the third format mentioned in the source
material. The compact disc. Yes, the Wikipedia
page details a later reissue on Compact Disc,
predictably titled, It, the CD. Also delightfully
blunt. Very. The advent of the CD completely
shattered the constraints we've been discussing.
You no longer had a side A and a side B. You
didn't have to worry about inner groove distortion.
You didn't have to worry about blank tape hiss.
You simply had a single continuous digital canvas
that could hold up to 74 minutes of audio. And
with all that newfound digital real estate, the
band didn't just leave the 46 -minute album as
it was. The source tells us they actively expanded
the runtime, adding three completely new tracks
to the end of the CD sequence. Right, let's look
at those. We get track 10, Bug and Me, at 3 .39.
We get track 12, It Lives Again, at 3 .46. But
the most significant addition is track 11. It's
a 6 -minute and 48 -second track called Hurricane
Fighter Plane. And the source provides a crucial
footnote here noting that this is a cover of
a song by the Red Crayola. The inclusion of a
Red Crayola cover is a deeply revealing aesthetic
choice. For context, the Red Crayola was an avant
-garde, psychedelic, and often highly abrasive
experimental rock band formed in the late 1960s.
They were not writing pop hits. Far from it.
They were notorious for creating unstructured
chaotic walls of sound that completely alienated
traditional rock audiences. So by choosing to
cover a track with an evocative aggressive title
like Hurricane Fighter Plane and stretching it
out to nearly seven minutes, Alien Sex Fiend
is doing more than just filling digital space.
They are planting a flag. They're explicitly
aligning themselves with the most boundary pushing,
uncompromising lineage of underground rock history.
It totally transforms the architecture of the
album. We started by analyzing this very deliberate,
highly curated, 46 minute vinyl experience. The
heavy descent of side A, the whiplash of side
B, the 42 second cliffhanger. Right. But when
you add a seven minute avant -garde psychedelic
cover and two other tracks to the end of it,
the runtime swells well past an hour. The cliffhanger
of To Be Continued isn't even the end of the
album. anymore. It's just a weird speed bump
before the bonus tracks kick in. It ruins the
cliffhanger. It really does. It raises a fascinating
philosophical question about the nature of the
album as an art form. Which version is the definitive
statement? That is the big question. Does the
sprawling 60 plus minute CD version dilute the
claustrophobic intensity of the original vinyl
sequencing? Or does the limitless format of the
CD finally allow the band to present the chaotic,
unedited scope of their vision without the physical
compromises required by wax and needles. The
source doesn't answer this, obviously. Yeah,
but it provides us with all the raw data to see
how the technology of the era fractured the concept
of a singular artistic release. After unpacking
all of these layers, the blistering timeline
of releases, the DIY ethos of the self -painted
cover, the audacity of a 13 -minute track, the
serialized 42 -second ending, and the absolute
chaos of the cassette and CD format wars, we
really need to look at how this was actually
received in its time. The critical reception.
Right. The reception section of our Wikipedia
source is incredibly brief. but it offers a singular,
incredibly potent piece of critical validation.
The magazine Trouser Press reviewed the album,
and the quote provided in the article calls it,
unquestionably, the group's most creative mind
-expanding undertaking. When you isolate that
phrase, mind -expanding undertaking, and apply
it to everything we've discussed today, it feels
like an incredibly accurate and earned assessment.
The review isn't just praising a catchy guitar
riff or a clever lyric. Mind -expanding speaks
to the entire of the project. It's the sheer
scale of the defiance. Yes. It is a band fundamentally
defying the expectations of how their music should
be packaged, paced, and consumed. When a front
man paints his own album cover, he is expanding
the boundaries of his artistic responsibility.
When a band sequences a 13 -minute song... followed
by a barrage of three -minute punk tracks, they
are expanding the listener's tolerance for structural
dissonance. And when they use an entire previous
studio album as functional filler for cassette
tape, they are completely blowing up the perceived
commercial value of their own catalog. Trouser
Press recognized that this wasn't just a collection
of songs. It was an exercise in testing the limits
of the format itself. It makes you look at a
simple Wikipedia page with an entirely new level
of respect. If you just skim the source material,
it reads like a dry catalog of times, dates,
and track titles. Just raw data points. But when
you actually sit down and decode the implications
of a 13 -minute and 13 -second runtime, when
you analyze the footnotes about the different
release formats, you uncover the story of a band
that viewed every single physical limitation
of the 1980s music industry as an opportunity
for subversion. They treated the medium as part
of the message. They didn't view the vinyl record
or the cassette tape as merely a neutral vessel
to transport audio to a consumer. They viewed
the constraints of those formats as a puzzle
to be solved. And they solved it with a mixture
of immense creativity and absolute pragmatism.
It's a testament to the vitality of the underground
scene during that transitional decade. Which
leaves us with our final takeaways for this deep
dive. We started with the bare bones of a 1986
release by Alien Sex Fiend. Through that text,
we've reconstructed a narrative about what happens
when an artist refuses to compromise. We've seen
how maintaining an annual release cycle requires
a furious, instinctual creative engine. We've
seen how taking control of the production and
the visual art creates a unified, auteurist vision.
And perhaps most importantly, We've explored
how the physical reality of the media itself,
the length of a vinyl groove, the blank space
on a spool of magnetic tape, the digital capacity
of a compact disc, can fundamentally alter, dictate,
and reshape the art that the audience ultimately
receives. To everyone listening right now, I
want to challenge you to take this perspective
into your own physical media collections. The
next time you pull a record off your shelf where
you find an old cassette tape in a thrift store,
look beyond the music itself. Look closely at
the track links. Look at how the songs are sequenced
across side A and side B. Look for the weird
formatting decisions, the bonus tracks, the literal
naming conventions like the cassette. Those details
are not just trivial footnotes for archivists.
They are the scars and the triumphs of an artist
grappling with the physical limitations of their
era. They are a crucial part of the story. Understanding
the container provides invaluable context for
the art it holds. It is a lens that enriches
the entire listening experience. And to leave
you with a final, provocative thought to mull
over as you go about your day, I want you to
think about that cassette release strategy one
more time. The stapled album. Exactly. Imagine
if your absolute favorite artist working today
was suddenly bound by the physical constraints
of 1986. Imagine if, in order to release their
highly anticipated new album, the physical medium
demands that they staple their entire previous
album to the back of it, essentially giving it
away for free just to fill the physical space
of the product. That would break the internet
today. It really forces a compelling question.
How much of the art we revere today, the pacing
we consider flawless, the album lengths we consider
standard, the separation of distinct eras, how
much of that is actually an intentional artistic
choice and how much of it is simply a byproduct
of the container it happens to come in. A phenomenal
question that challenges our entire understanding
of modern music consumption. Thank you so much
for joining us on this dip dive into the brilliant,
chaotic, and truly mind -expanding world of Alien
Sex Fiends, the album. Keep questioning the formats,
keep looking closer at the liner notes, and we
will catch you on the next deep dive. Thank you
for listening.