If your only exposure to Alien Sex Fiend has been Beavis and Butthead, then you should check out this collection. Well, it's not a bad idea even if you have a clue.

The most amazing thing about ASF has been the consistency of work. It's all middling-level new wave stuff that is just catchy enough to make you hit repeat "just one more time".

There is no conspiracy of talent or anything here. Just mindless pablum (albeit of the rather alternative type) that turns your mind to jelly and makes you start screaming "Spin this wheel, Pat!" at perfectly nice senior citizens. We should all be highly grateful.

Goth-tinged pop that also draws in some industrial influences. Wonderfully atmospheric throughout.

The album opens with a real dreamy pop gem, "Christabel", and you might prepare for a more mellow experience. But no. Things get noisy and fast, even while keeping to the pop constructions. Images of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Love and Rockets flow into your mind.

Obviously, Big Electric Cat has the talent to crank out ten great goth-pop tunes, or ten great industrial-pop tunes or even ten pure pop tunes. But instead, Dreams is an album that flows all over the pop universe while still managing to stick to a coherent band sound. The disc challenges you to accept all of its offerings, which you will do gladly. Perfect music for a rainy fall day (or almost any other time). This gets a big WOW.

Heavy blues rock, veering between such influences as John Mayall, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers.

They steal more feeling than riffs, and all the songs are originals. Technically competent throughout, occasionally sensational sounding.

But often enough, there just isn't the fire needed to really shine. The band seems content to just play a few licks, forgetting about any sense of inspiration. Too bad, because there is a load of potential here.

Live, live, live; the way I understand is best to appreciate Brutal Juice. These noise merchants from Denton, Texas had a recent 7" on Alternative Tentacles, but there is so much more here.

Brutal Juice takes a slightly punky approach to the walls-of-guitar sound, so trendy with the kids these days. Things work best when everything gets going fast and just the slightest bit out of control, as is usual with this sort of band. Most songs end up in that pleasant territory.

The production is pretty decent for a sound board recording, only the usual problems with extreme highs and lows. The songs were recorded live, but there is no pretense; the tracks are banded, not all run together. Doesn't matter to me.

Brutal Juice isn't the greatest as far as songwriting or even song construction goes, but the members almost make up for that deficiency in fiendish energy. There is plenty of that fuel to feed on here.

Not that long ago, Cathedral was an interesting band. The songs weren't dreadfully dull and uninspired. The Ethereal Mirror wasn't a masterpiece, but it wasn't anywhere near this awful.

A missal of four songs, each competing for the title of most masterfully mundane. The only thing of minor interest is the fourth track, which reprises Black Sabbath AND Led Zeppelin. Hmmm... will Kingdom Come see a revival soon?

Hopefully the upcoming full-length will make up for this just plain terrible disc. These nasty EPs don't necessarily mean anything.

The big danger with goth music is that all of the excesses can cancel each other out. All of the weepiness is wiped out by a fast beat, or emotional lyrics turned bland by weak guitar work.

Throughout much of this album, I get the feeling something's wrong. I can't pinpoint any cause, but it just feels like there's something missing or left out.

Almost like too much work was put into creating this work. I think a live recording of Children on Stun would be quite good, but for some reason things here got fucked up in the mix. Too bad.

Back for one last gasp, Rozz and Eva O. have borrowed the use of their old moniker (forsaking for the moment Shadow Project) and have cranked out another Christian Death album.

Through myriad line-ups, one thing has been constant: I haven't liked the band. Something about the overwhelming sense of self-importance and unabated self-indulgence just bugged me.

It continues here. Rage isn't so much dreadful as just not compelling. There are some nice moments in the structure, but in all it just doesn't come together for me. And that's too bad, because for once the production is quite good and the playing pretty decent as well. I suppose I'm just not a fan of silly pomposity.

X-Rated Fairy Tales
Superior Catholic Finger
(Cleopatra)

The first issue of Helios Creed's first two post-Chrome albums on CD. 1985's X-Rated Fairy Tales is a kind of reaction against the whole Chrome ethos. It's poppy, accessible (with lots of smarmy keyboards) and downright cheesy. At times painful to listen to, Fairy Tales is a mistake Creed never made again.

Apparently the weirdness induced by the earlier album was more difficult to get over than at first realized. Superior Catholic Finger arrived in 1989 and immediately proved that Creed could still create amazing sonic chaos.

Yes, there is some great riffage and absolutely amazing production. Finger very occasionally wanders into Sisters of Mercy territory, but on the weird side to be sure. This is one of, if not the finest album Creed has put out. There are the pop moments, but Creeds stunning guitar work wails throughout, and there are so many things thrown into the production mix that you'll never catch them all.

Not just a re-issue of interest to completists only, this disc can rightfully deemed essential.

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Hoping to cash in on the string of Metallica sound-alikes employing an industrial base (Helmet, Pantera, etc.), Shrapnel gives us Crimeny.

As such things go, I like Derek Taylor's voice, which lies somewhere between Doug Pinnick (King's X) and James Hetfield (um, you know).

The songs are about as original as you can get with two-and three-string chords, the rhythm section moves along decently.

There is a lot of commercial potential in this sound. Crimeny puts everything together very nicely; it's just that I always cringe when I hear something that is so flavor-of-the-month. A bad habit, I suppose.

A good album; I just wish the band would move away from the trends and really establish its own sound.

He has been at this rock'n blues game for a long time. I just wish he would find a little soul.

Derringer has all of the technical skills necessary to play about whatever he wants to. He's got a pretty good blues voice. He writes all of the songs here, and they're pretty good. Unfortunately, I just don't hear him pouring his heart into either his singing or playing. It's all by-the-note kinda stuff.

Which means he's about as interesting as the Sunday house blues band at the local metal bar. You can sit and admire his playing all day, that won't change the fact that this is still amazingly average. Yeah, Jeff Healey got by sluffing off emotion, too, but he had a major label marketing department behind him. And where is Mr. Healey today?

Derringer could do a lot better. I'm holding him to that.

Perhaps the two most creative bands to emerge from the nasty world of grunge music, Iceburn and Engine Kid are so far removed from their sonic starting points that that particular reference may seem obscene.

Engine Kid does its usual take on the pianissimo to fortissimo in two beats school, pleasant and meandering one second, pulverizing the next. I keep hearing the band improve as the guys keep struggling to define their sound. These three songs are more than nice.

Iceburn has two (lengthy) takes on Stravinski's "Rites of Spring" (remember Fantasia?). Stunning would be an understatement, so I'll just say I was speechless. If you have yet to really experience Iceburn's musical genius, then get on now. The line will be out the door before you know it.

Nice pop-tinged noise, a la Poster Children or Die Monster Die. Except that the dynamic ranges are much more subdued, with things flowing along much more smoothly. I kinda like that.

The agnst and energy are just as apparent, but the band does not see fit to overwhelm listeners with it's message. Apparently the words are perfectly suited to that purpose.

Don't get me wrong; this stuff is good and crunchy with plenty of hollering. But the songs stay within certain restraints, and it works very well.

As aggressive industrial goes, this is pretty wimpy musically. The beats often sound like they came off a Casio sampler, and the guitars are never allowed to really dominate. Siebold's vocals are kinda nasty, but not really quite up to the snide and crude level that is expected.

That said, there is much more texture underlying everything than the current trend-setters have. There is no pretense of a "band", and I can't really detect any desire to "rock out". So what is this, anyway?

Well, a hybrid of club techno and the more aggressive industrial dance music, I suppose. With a few touches of the ambient and other electronic genres. In other words, you won't get bored.

Fairly experimental in the way things are mixed, Hate Dept.'s music resists all attempts to be classified. Fine by me.

1983. You dig bands like Joy Division, Depeche Mode and Gen X. But those bands aren't the cultural icons they are today. So when you record your album, not many notice.

Well, the music cognoscenti of the day picked up on Kommunity FK, but the general public didn't and still haven't. Doesn't mean the music sucks.

In fact, it's more than good. This is the first CD issue of Vision, and it's overdue. There's a new generation of kids who don't remember when "Goth" was a term no one used. And while KFK doesn't stick to that sort of thing, you can hear where bands like Christian Death come from (I meant it as a complement, anyway).

Unpretentious rap-core from the heart of the (NY) city. The production left a somewhat muddy sound; the guitars wander in through the fog.

The lyrics are mostly silly and the sound gets repetitive and cheesy. But I can't find any of the arrogance that similar bands like Biohazard exude, so I'm in a forgiving mood.

Static is a pretty nondescript album that still managed to get me going from time to time. Sometimes you have to indulge in simple pleasures.

For the record: I saw these guys many times when I was living in Kansas City, and for a couple of years I talked them up to lots of labels. The usual response was: "Yeah, they're fucking great, but they won't talk to us." That's an unusual excuse, to be sure.

Anyway, Molly McGuire has finally gotten a full-length out, so all those questions are moot. And what an album, too!

The sound has matured somewhat, but there are still elements of grunge guitar, Chicago noise beats and constructions, with a few classic rock riffs and sensibilities tossed in just to confuse you some more.

The end result sounds a little like another K.C. band, Season to Risk (whose singer guests on a track), but with a little more melody and musical punch.

Sisters Of... is a great album, but with the talent in this band, I'm sure there's even more waiting to come forth. Molly McGuire should be terrorizing the nation for some time to come.

As most of you have figured out by now, I'm a sucker for plain-and-simple pop music. So when I didn't go nuts over the last Sense Field album, it probably didn't compute.

I puzzled over it, and eventually tried to justify me feelings in the review. Now comes this collection of songs from the band's two self-released outings, with a couple newer songs to boot.

The music is solid, the playing good and yet I still don't respond. Even more than before, I cannot explain why I just get no vibe from this band. A lot of people love them (and that makes sense to me), but I simply can't find my way onto the bandwagon. I wish I could really specify why.

A little dance hall, some hip-hop beats, plenty of samples and raw punk power. Sound strange? Of course not.

It's all a little sloppy and silly, but that only makes sense. As the songs meld from hard core to cheez r&b to reggae and back all over the place, I keep wondering just what these boys sound like live, and exactly who sticks around.

Obviously fans of Bim Skala Bim and Bad Brains can dig, and I've never been a fan of slagging diversity. Sublime's technical skills are a little wanting, considering what the band is attempting. But it's a noble quest nonetheless.

There's plenty here to interest almost any music programmer, but you will have to put in your dues and dig a little. With a little direction, Sublime could really blossom.

When you do pop-inflected punk, there are but a few real classy influences. Ten Foot Pole fall dead into the Bad Religion school (you can hear riff and bass line references in nearly every song), ending up somewhere around the Suffer sound.

Clean enough to understand, with the philosophical bent if not the vocabulary, Ten Foot Pole lives up to its high aspirations quite well. The boys are more than competent musicians, and many songs are unquestionable classics.

Bad Religion hasn't been down this road in some time, and Ten Foot Pole does a great job of carrying on the pop-punk flame. When an album sounds like this, every jock at the station wants a piece of it.

A good sampling of the past and the future of the Goth scene, with an emphasis on the lesser known. Not like there has been any real major goth breakthrough on this side of the Atlantic, anyway.

For the uninitiated, you will notice that like all subspecies of music, goth has plenty of variation. There's more here than bone-white singers whining about death (or a bad hair day). And the music is similarly varied.

The liners are not quite as helpful as they could be, but since most of the bands on the disc have albums that can be ordered through Cleopatra, I assume the hope is that those interested will merely order up scads of music.

After all, the best way to learn about music is not by reading reviews or even scholarly works. You just have to listen.

Roger Miller's Exquisite Corpse
Unfold advance cassette
(SST)

Anyone who can describe what Roger Miller does in three sentences isn't doing him justice. This is wild and exciting.