Nervous Gender - Music From Hell

Released: 19/01/24 (delayed from 03/11/23)

Confrontational, unhinged, and unabashedly queer, Nervous Gender's 1981 masterpieceMusic from Hellfinally gets a decades-overdue reissue (and even then, it was late in coming, as it was originally slated for an early November 2023 release). A brilliantly obnoxious mix of post-punk, minimal synth, early industrial music and high-octane cabaret, it sounds like Sleaford Mods if they'd grown up on a diet of Silver Apples, Throbbing Gristle andThe Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

If Eric Idle and Neil Innes had decided, post Rutles, to lampoon the West Coast punk scene, one has the feeling that they would have ditched such plans on discovering that Nervous Gender existed, respectfully conceding that no fiction they dreamed up could be as wild as the band's lived reality, which made them outliers even by the standards of the joyfully transgressive late-70s/80s LA music scene. A case in point: when drummer Don Bolles (ex of the Germs) left the group to join 45 Grave, he was replaced by an eight-year-old German boy called Sven Pfeiffer. But to be clear, while the anecdotes may be the stuff of legend, what makes Nervous Gender an essential part of punk history is that their thrillingly visceral music is even more remarkable than the stories.