Artist: Alien Sex Fiend
Title: I'm Doing Time in a Maximum Security Twilight Home
Format: 12" single
Label: Anagram Records
Catalogue Number: 12ANA30
Year of Release: 1985
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Tracklisting:
A1) I'm Doing Time in a Maximum Security Twilight Home
B1) I'm Doing Time (version)
B2) In and Out of My Mind (version)
B3) Backward Beaver
8th single from this industrial-goth outfit, released coincidentally in the year I turned eight. Listening to it over twenty years later, I was struck by how little it had dated, compared with the Al's Records 12" from a few weeks back. This probably has more to do with the unchanging fundamentals of gothic rock - being effected, punk-style guitar, minor key themes, heavy bass, snare drums, gloomy lyrics and badly dressed teenagers - than any futuristic genius on ASF's part.
Lead vocalist Nik Fiend does a passable Marvin the Paranoid Android impression, dourly chanting the track title over the drum machine and big-guitar sound on the first number, along with the enigmatic phrase, "All I get's the bone", and other lyrics about the rules and accompanying loneliness of doing time in a twilight home. It's pretty silly, but they look quite hard on the cover, so I didn't laugh too much.
The 'version' that opens side B is almost exactly the same, just more annoying in that there's a lot of cut'n'pasting of lyrics going on, and even more effects on the guitar. In and Out of my Mind (version), follows the same idea lyrically as I'm Doing Time, but with the added bonus of a pitch-shifting young Nik every now and again, a trick which gets very tiresome, very quickly.
The single is redeemed by Backward Beaver which features droning noises and backwards voices. They're probably saying something rude, but I couldn't work it out. It goes into a lock-groove at the end though, which is one of those things I love about records, so gets a thumbs up.
The record is also one of the initial pressings, and comes in the rougher cardboard sleeve, not the glossy one of later pressings. Extra (and much needed) kudos there.
