4AD reissue ‘Junkyard’ in a special vinyl edition. Apart from the LP, the package also contains a bonus 7” featuring ‘Release The Bats’ and ‘Blast Off’. Additionally, it includes a CD of all 12 tracks, so that fans can also access the music digitally.

The album has been mastered from Henry Rollins’ 2000 re-master, previously unavailable in Europe, while the single is a new, 2012 master taken from the original studio analogue tapes.

“Released in May 1982, ‘Junkyard’s uncompromising contents signalled both the oncoming demise of the band responsible for them and rock & roll’s logical conclusion. Harnessing the power of The Stooges’ ‘Funhouse’ with the limitless possibilities offered by Captain Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’, The Birthday Party were a product of the uncertain times that created them - the unwitting soundtrack to a time of death, darkness and decay.”

“Troubled music for a troubled age, Nick Cave’s world was created in a white-hot blast of visceral energy, gut-wrenching violence and Dadaist stupidity while the work of his band mates fleshed out the vision to devastating effect. Here, blasphemous imagery fraternised with scenes of murder, brutality and sadism as it rolled and revelled in a trash aesthetic that belied the intellect behind it. The noise created by the band was at once familiar - a wild mutation of rock’s primordial slime mixed with a nightmarish interpretation of Elmer Bernstein and a skewed vision of the blues spewed out rather than played - yet startlingly new and all underlined by an inevitable finality.”

“With the passing of 30 years, ‘Junkyard’ still sounds as if it’s waiting for rock music to catch up with it. Throwing down a taunting gauntlet to subsequent generations of musicians, this feral collection of songs simultaneously closes a door on something that can’t be repeated or improved upon. The distance of time has failed to reduce its sonic power and revisiting Junkyard three decades after its birth is to rediscover an album more melodic if no less manic as was initially perceived.” - Julian Marszalek, The Quietus

A reckless whirl of mutant rockabilly, black-eyed swamp-blues, outlaw imagery and stomach-churning violence, The Birthday Party were one of the definitive post-punk groups, creative and destructive in equal measure. Originally called The Boys Next Door, the band formed at Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne, Australia in the early '70s. The initial line-up was singer/lyricist Nick Cave, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey, bassist/provocateur Tracy Pew and drummer Phill Calvert. They started out performing covers, but were soon galvanised into writing their own material by the nascent Aussie punk movement (notably The Saints and Radio Birdman). The Boys Next Door's development was accelerated by the addition of visionary guitarist Rowland S Howard in 1978. The following year saw the release of an album, Door Door, on local label Mushroom, but its creators felt the record failed to capture the power of their live show. The group had also grown tired of Melbourne, where they were banned from most venues and routinely hassled by the police.

By the start of the new decade The Boys Next Door had changed their name to The Birthday Party and moved to London. Living in poverty and squalor, they had to borrow equipment and only played ten UK shows in 1980. The second of these, at the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead, was attended by 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell. Despite a shambolic set, Ivo saw them again the following month, and by the end of the summer The Birthday Party were signed to 4AD. Their first release for the label was The Friend Catcher 12", comprising three songs recorded back in Melbourne as The Boys Next Door.

They went on to release a couple of albums for 4AD, along with a couple of  EPs before disbanding, with Nick going on to form The Bad Seeds with Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld. This album collects together some of the finest moments from these releases.