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Good morning to all. Today M. Colin Tappe returns to drop some UK82 knowledge and opinion.Here ’tis: 2008 collector scum market getting you down? Tired of seeing 3rd and 4th tier unpolished turds hitting triple digits? Well, in times like these it may seem like you either gotta give up and go mp3punk (in 2008 we may have progressed to FLACcore, I dunno) or just bite the bullet and start paying the going rate for the records you want, even if the going rate is about twice as much as when you originally wanted them a few years back; sink or swim, if you will. There’re other options, of course, like hunting down stuff from various regions that haven’t quite shown up on the collector radar yet, “digging deeper,” all that, OR, you can quit being a fucking crybaby and embrace picking up decent condition vinyl with “punk condition” sleeves at 2001 ebay prices.

For instance, take this here Ultra Violent ep which looks like it was boiled for 5 minutes, stuck to a wall with wheat paste and peeled off like a bandaid after it dried, BUT, has pretty much perfect wax. You gonna kick this full fledged banger out of bed if it goes for less than $20? If you do you’re a fool, I say, or worse, have those things I’ve heard about called “standards.”The Ultra Violent ep has a pretty big cult following, and for whatever reason seems to be the only Riot City or even UK82 release I see on a lot of USHC collectors’ wantlists (I’ve heard some speculate this is due to their inclusion on the first Killed By Hardcore comp, but I’m pleading ignorance on that one). The scarcity of this record makes sense, as it was put out in ’83, towards the end of Riot City’s boom when punk 7”s stopped selling 1,000 copies in a matter of weeks in the UK, and by the tail end of ‘83 Riot City and No Future would stick to putting out 12” eps instead, but sonically, this record’s appeal amongst non-UKHC collectors has always confused me a bit. I mean, I guess one could say they sound a bit like USHC fist bangers Battalion of Saints, NOTA, Pig Children, etc., but realistically they have way more in common with their countrymen Broken Bones or GBH (who the aforementioned US bands were biting off of as well). Of course saying you’re into Ultra Violent gets you cool points, whereas writing GBH on your jacket if you’re not a teenager caries with it a certain stigma, so I’m guessing that has something to do with this record’s appeal. Having killer artwork and an intimidating title doesn’t hurt either.

All that shit’s silly to think about though, ‘cause really, this is a scorcher no matter how you slice it. You get the standard blaring, treble-heavy Riot City production with about a million guitar tracks it sounds like, and a ferocious singalong right out the gate. The mastering on all these old singles is way bright and in your face, which compliments the tunage perfectly. Fuck, it seriously makes me want to give up on life and live in a cave when I think about how even a factory style dummy punk label like Riot City was able to consistently crank out these rich, sonically perfect sounding records that still sound great after a quarter of a century or jamming, and when you pay $30 for some deluxe reissue these days it’s nothing but clipping, artificially loud mastering and surface pops fresh out of the packaging. Ugh.

But wait, we’re still talking about the good things in life, the Ultra Violent ep. The b-side starts out with a mid-paced skanker, “Where Angels Dare Not Tread,” and the ep finishes off with “Dead Generation,” which is just as fast and ragin’ as “Crime For Revenge,” though not quite as memorable.The singer Adie went on to sing on English Dogs’ fucking PERFECT “To The Ends of the Earth” 12,” and just by singing on those two records the dude’s gotta have one of the best hardcore resumes out there. According to Ian Glasper’s Burning Britain book, there was 4 songs recorded for this session, the unreleased track going under the name “Sign of the Times” and there’s a 4 track demo, neither of which I’ve heard, so hopefully someone’s industrious enough to put some effort into doing a nice reissue.