On offer here we finally have the long promised reissue of the bands landmark début album, which is presented in splendid and ultimate form with support and backing from of the projects two core and founding members: Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant. Firstly the albums being digitally remastered from its original analogue studio tapes, to give it’s  punchy angry  bleakness an extra edge and kick. We also have 16 bonus/ unreleased tracks on offer, and these take in: early duo demos featuring just Rimbaud & Ignorant, 1977 studio recordings in unknown studio in Soho, and Crass demo recordings from the southern studios in 1978.

The release also contains the full original & controversial album artwork for the album(in mini poster form); which features the highly distinctive and influential bleak, black & white cut-up photograph artwork of  Gee Vaucher. There’s also a 64-page cd case sized booklet which contains full album lyrics, more artwork, and liner notes from both  Rimbaud and Ignorant- discussing the forming of Crass and the recording of the album.

Onto the album it’s self and it still has such power, energy and creative bleakness to it after all these years. The original album was made up of 18 tracks and lasted just over thirty one minutes, but what a 31 minutes it is!. The album opens with the spoken word and grim guitar feedback of ‘Asylum’; which finds Eve Libertine( who later performed spoken word texts on NWW’s bleak & surreal classic Merzbild Schwet) reciting Rimbaud anti Christian texts.  Then we’re onto one of Crass’s most well know songs and a anarcho-punk classic to boot ‘Do they Owe As Living’ which finds Ignorant snarling and ranting over a taunt and stark mixture of wondering bass lines, hacking spidery guitars and of  course the unforgettable chorus refrain “Do they owe us a living?- of course they fucking do”. The rest of the albums 16 tracks sees the band mixing together their Anti-consumerism, Anti- war, Anti- religion and Anarchist texts(that where usually spat and ranted in  a fairly speedy manner by Ignorant). With loud bass guitar runs, hacking caustic and at times quite experiential guitar textures,noisey textures, and often militaristic punked drums- all to make the ‘boot to face’ of year zero punk that the album is.

So in finishing up this is a long needed (and asked for reissue) of this classic nasty, stark and very powerful record, which still sounds as angry, focused and thought-provoking as it did back in the late 1970’s. So it’s unmissable really, and  it's one of the reissues of year too; both in sonic worth and presentation.