Released on handsome red splatter vinyl for its 45th birthday, the 1981 debut by Edinburgh’s finest has lost none of its ferocity with the passing of time and is as divisive now as it was back then. A vital, hardcore-infused re-statement of the uncompromising principles of 1977 or the retrograde acme of cliched and cartoonish punk? Neither point of view is without its merits.
In 1981, there were plenty of reasons to believe that UK punk was indeed dead. Sid, who was punk, was dead while his former colleague John Lydon was releasing experimental records like The Flowers of Romance. The Clash were making funky pop singles and the Damned goth pop ones; even stalwarts Sham 69 had split after the lamentable The Game. Meanwhile, Wattie Buchan…