If you thought ASF had entered some form of cryogenic hibernation, you'd be dead, dead wrong. Something was brewing in their caustic cauldron, and new album "Information Overload" is IT.

This weird world of ours has been violently altered, and this latest aural opus reflects this new Age of Chaos . "Information Overload" is an angrier, more fangtastic Fiend, a strobe-light set to music, a waking dream of corrosive clarity and purpose. It is the sound of cable-news clickers scrolling on a thousand screens at near-subliminal speed, a mad rush to "rape and pillage in the global village" inducing a hyper-stimulated sense of opulent overload in the lucky listener---almost more Fiend than the mortal mind can encompass.

The music is harder and more stripped-down, Mrs Fiend's synthetic elements more relentless and devastating, great slabs of gristly guitar are thrown into the Fiend cerebral centrifuge, spinning madly through songs like "Motherfucker Burn," as barking electro attack dogs bark out their message of "inhale, exhale, pop and turn on." The moan-mania of "Baby" makes for what is clearly the sexiest Alien Sex Fiend tune to date. If you can imagine incandescent Venusian groove things shagging in zero gravity, this is the sound they'd be jacked in to. Nik Fiend goes bonkers on "Gotta Have It," ranting his nebulous needs: "All for me! Fuck you!" Technoidal mantra-ray "Kiss Arse" grabs your reptile brain and doesn't let go, until all eleven minutes and twenty-one seconds have done their diabolical damage. The superbly spectral "Voices in My Head" captures the surreal feel of a cyber-séance, with ghostly chorales haunting Nik's every sonic step, while a fevered incantation of The Doors' seminal screed "Five To One" closes things out on a classic apocalyptic note.

"Information Overload" is only the latest launch pad for this band's ongoing exploration of new sonic terrain, a perfect potion for the 21st Century that is sure to find this fungal fantasia of a group once again refusing to stand stock still.