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UPDATE 31 MARCH 12.58 pm Vinyl LP test pressings of Death Trip have arrived - yaaay.... now to give it a spin.... we've been waiting for this moment for SO long..

UPDATE 25 MARCH Nik Fiend writes : Vinyl test pressings due next week.. Can't wait - I'm drooling at the prospect!

UPDATE 22 MARCH 2010
Package has now gone to our new digital distributor so they can get Nocturnal Emissions, Information Overload, Para-Abnormal & of course the new Death Trip album available as downloads.

UPDATE 19 MARCH 2010 Mrs Fiend writes :
Finally finished the mega-sized download forms so that the new album "Death Trip" will be available via download for them that wants it, but it sounds better on CD & even better on Vinyl... but each to their own eh?

UPDATE 17 MARCH 2010
Manufacturing licenses are all ok. Phew!

UPDATE 12 MARCH 2010
Album artwork proofs arrived today, checked 'em out - perfecto!

UPDATE 10 March 2010
Catching up with all the jobs left to one side while the album art was getting done....

UPDATE 09 March 2010
An exciting day - at 14.46 hours all parts for the album were sent off to manufacturers - can't wait to get the Vinyl LP test pressings - yum!

UPDATE 08 March 2010 Nik Fiend writes :
A few corrections made & then the vinyl art was added to the templates for manufacturing. & at 21.39 hours - ALL the artwork was finished. For CD and vinyl - OH YES!! It's all been printed out to double check everything too. The printer had steam coming out of its ears! It's been so frantically full on, I just hope I don't go into a downer now... don't wanna stop or wind down really! It's weird to have finished it... A brief celebration before starting to catch up with other stuff that's been on the back burner while we've been concentrating on the artwork...

UPDATE 07 March 2010 - Nik Fiend writes :
CD art is all finished. Over to Mrs F for final proof reading - my spelling can be a bit er-"interesting"! - while I get on with fitting the vinyl templates.....

UPDATE 05 March 2010 - Nik Fiend writes :
Finished fitting the CD Booklet & half of the inner sleeve for the LP onto the templates. We ain't done ANY vinyl since 1998 (Tarot 12" single), it's all been CD. You lot said you wanted a vinyl LP - so I'm doing IT for YOU!

UPDATE 04 March 2010 - Mrs Fiend writes :
After much to-ing & fro-ing for the last couple of weeks we've settled on the manufacturer for both the CD & Vinyl LP. Lacquers for the Vinyl LP have been collected from Metropolis. Nik has to fit his artworks into the manufacturer's templates - some swearing is involved when you find that the sizing of the templates varies by 1mm from when we did "Para-Abnormal"!

UPDATE 03 March 2010
Album barcodes sorted, Catalogue numbers - check, legal stuff done, forms filled...(download ones to do later).. artwork looking awesome - soon come!

Skull drawing by Nik Fiend

UPDATE 26 February 2010 - Mrs Fiend writes :
Now that the recording process is finished - we've decided to change the title of this blog to "Fiendish Album Update" cos once the recording is completed - all the other work starts!! Firstly the artwork, which - when you do all of it yerself as we do - takes quite a while!!! So Nik's been working on ideas for that for sometime. Then you've gotta get the album mastered, then manufactured. But before you can manufacture you hafta arrange barcodes, Catalogue Numbers, do the legal stuff - which is basically filling in one heck of a lot of forms - yes they are mostly online forms these days but you can guarantee they'll have changed the bloody format since the last time you did 'em - aaaaarghhh.... stuff like listing out all the tracks in order, writers, name of the record company, blah, blah, along with various special codes so the different songs can be identified..... & you wanna see the download forms!! ERK! We couldn't let out the title of the album until all that stuff was done but now we can say it - loud n proud - it's called.... DEATH TRIP!

So we thought it would be interesting for you to hear about all the various steps we'll be taking to get the finished DEATH TRIP CD & LP onto the store shelves - be they real or virtual...

UPDATE 24 February 2010
Album cut will be happening this week (snow permitting!)... it's all go here!

UPDATE 18 February 2010 - Nik Fiend writes :
Getting the tracks tied up now ready to go & do the cut (mastering). We're sweating & toiling to get it all together as soon as is possible, but like everything - it always takes a bit longer than expected!

UPDATE 13 February 2010 - Nik Fiend writes :
Still been mostly working on artwork for the album... though did have to mix a couple of the tracks again - just a few finishing touches were needed to get 'em as corking as possible, so that the album will be honking on all fronts. Other people probably wouldn't have bothered, but we ain't like that....

UPDATE - 01 February 2010 - Working on album artwork....

Released by the Hyped To Death label, The Messthetics compilations concentrate on rare, DIY, independent , undiscovered punk & post-punk bands around the UK & US from 1977 to 1984 -  "Music realised & released by any means necessary".

The Messthetics #107 CD is a collection of 23 tracks (plus 7 bonus mp3s), focusing on London based bands between the years 1978 to 1981 & includes the track "Royal Northern" by Demon Preacher. As you may already know this was Nik Fiend's earlier band, (& later The Demons) which at one time included Razzle, later to drum for Hanoi Rocks. The 4 track "Royal Northern EP" released on the Illegal Pressings label was Demon Preacher's first single. Record Collector (May 2006) had it listed as selling for £80 a copy in their Top 100 Punk Rarities !

After spending all of his spare cash to record the tracks, Nik borrowed the money from his boss at work to get the records pressed, & - in true punk stylee - he photocopied, sellotaped & hand numbered all the sleeves himself . The record caught the late, great John Peel's ear and eye and sold out quickly enough for Nik to re-pay his boss & for Small Wonder to offer a record deal for a follow-up, the infamous 'Little Miss Perfect' which hit #3 in the indie charts back in 1978.

Messthetics #107 has been receiving airplay on a number of radio stations worldwide, including in the UK the BBC6 "Freak Zone" show. It's #1 on the University of Michigan radio station in Ann Arbor (where Jimmy Osterberg, later known as Iggy Pop, formed his high-school band, the Iguanas). Reviews are already appearing - such as in the current issue of Record Collector (by Kris Needs), the next issue of Sound Projector (by Ed Pinsent) proclaiming it "equally thrilling from start to finish".

Nik is also mentioned in "The Better Man" (Episode 7, Season 4) of the Venture Brothers cartoon. This is an American animated action/comedy TV series which chronicles the advenures of 2 dopey yet well meaning teenage boys, Hank & Dean Venture. In this episode, amongst references to various films, Marvel comics characters, Batman & Doctor Strange, one character called "The Alchemist" says that he used to visit the Batcave while musician Nik Fiend was still the doorman there. Please note! Nik was never a doorman, he managed the Batcave club for some weeks in 1983.

UPDATE 15 January 2010 - Mrs Fiend writes :
Blimey Nik - that blog of yours (18 December) made it sound like you're just lying abaht while I was doing damn near everything!!... (no "typical male/female" jokes p-lease!) hahaha.... so just to put it straight - as well as doing vocals, Nik has been playing loads of guitar, creating loops (yeah ok I check the timings cos he can be a bit erratic!), sampling stuff up, not to mention MOST of the engineering.... so there! Oh & a humungous amount of tea consumption!!

UPDATE 13 January 2010 - We know we wished you all a "Cool Yule" but not a f-f-f-freezing one! & not continuing into the New Year! Aaargh!... greetings from a very cold n snowy UK

UPDATE 07 January 2010 - Gaps in this blog don't mean we're not doing something, we're so busy doing wot we're doing we keep forgetting about it!

UPDATE 05 January 2010 - Took a break for a while over Christmas/New Year - time to re-energise brains & ear'oles was much needed!

The perception from some media, etc, is that everyone is only interested in downloads nowadays...& only listen to music on their ipods or mp3s on their computers.... etc, etc, your answers have shown us that - at least for Alien Sex Fiend fans - this is definitely NOT the case for the overwhelming majority of you. It is music (!) to our ears - like us, ASF fans are free thinkers - you make your own minds up, regardless of what "they" are telling you.

Whilst there's nothing wrong with digital - after all some of you newer fans have initially discovered us thru downloads, & it makes deleted titles available, AND we all know that storing CDs / vinyl takes up way more space, so downloads are more "convenient" in that respect - it is great that you perceive ASF releases to be more valuable & more of an "art form" (for want of a better phrase) - both in terms of the music as well as the cover art.

Some of you still do appreciate the finer sound qualities of vinyl... & those people aren't always the older fans either! Although there were a lot of votes for every format, in general CD came out on top & least-voted-for was downloads. Only a tiny percentage of respondees are into downloads ONLY, most of you do want to OWN a physical Alien Sex Fiend recording, whether vinyl or CD, cos it means more to you, thank you! - though one of those people admitted he was into downloads simply because he'd burnt his ears out by spending too much time in underground clubs (yes Marc in Berlin, it's you!) so that now he can't tell the difference any more! Ooops!

Great to hear how much you love Nik's artwork on the covers / booklets.... & that you "will buy anything, regardless of format, just cos it's Alien Sex Fiend" - that's wonderful, it's so great that you think that way - you are THE BEST fans & we love YOU too!

Special mentions go to - Jesse in Canada, who was brief, to the point & made us laugh with his statement "Vinyl is awesome. Fuck downloads. You guys rock." From Andrew in London - "Downloads for ASF? Somehow that's too disposable. ASF are too important..." & from Greg in the US with "You know what? I want Nik and Mrs. Fiend to release their album/s and single/s however they damn well please! I'll buy it no matter what, you can be certain of this."

Of course we haven't been able to contact every single fiend fan around the world to get every person's opinion - but at least the survey gives us some indication of where your heads are at...

The thing is, downloads can be done anyway - other than considerable form filling, they don't really cost us to set 'em up... yes it would be lovely to do every format that's going but this would cost too much in money & time with mastering, setting up different artworks, etc & we wouldn't get the album released - which is the main thing - for months and months if we attempt to do too many formats ...AND we want to get out there & play some LIVE SHOWS for you as soon as we possibly can... So! now we will go do some sums & work out what we CAN do.... we don't need to tell you that it's tough economically at the moment so we've gotta be careful cos we don't wanna become a defunkt record label!