Specimen - AZOIC

Jungle

£9.45

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: FREUDCD054
Barcode: 5013145205426
Release Date: 02 Sep 2022
Genre: Gothic/Post-Punk/Batcave

Gothic Godfathers and Batcave founders who pushed boundaries with their glam sleaze rock.
‘The Batcave’ opened 40 years ago. Becoming a genre, its success overshadowed the band.

This compiles all their major-label tracks with indie single 12”s and more for their only album.
SPECIMEN formed around 1981 (a Bolanesque, theatrical, horror-gothic glam band). To get some gigs started a club where they and their friends could hang out. THE BATCAVE soon became the place to be.
Draped in nets, with sculptures, mud-wrestling and weird events going on in numerous rooms, it was soon swamped with TV crews and journalists along with all the creative artists of the era. A bidding war saw Specimen eventually sign to a major label, who spent lots of money on orchestras, a ‘Batcave’ album and other whims, but issuing only two Specimen singles.

Those six tracks (issued by Sire as a mini-LP in the US) are included here on AZOIC, together with 12” versions of subsequent indie singles, unreleased demos and two songs only ever heard live, Azoic and Wolverines.

Guitarist Jon Klein went on to join Siouxsie & The Banshees. Singer Olli Wisdom became a psy-trance musician as Space Tribe. He died aged 63 in 2021.

TRACKS: - 1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (12”) 2. Tell Tail 3. Beauty Of Poisin (12”) 4. Hex (12”) 5. Returning From A Journey (12”) 6. Syria 7. Dead Man’s Autochop 8. Stand Up Stand Out 9. Holes (12”) 10. Lovers 11. Sharp Teeth Pretty Teeth 12. Azoic (Live) 13. Wolverines (Live)