Performing in black balaclavas and under assumed names to protect their true identities from the really rather interested and fascist Special Branch of the Queensland police force, the Black Assassins were part of the second wave of punk in Brisbane.

Many consider the backwards view of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen National Party State government of the 1970s and 1980s part of the reason that the BrisVegas music scene was so vibrant – nothing breeds insurrection like repression. Rough, raw and ready, this Greatest Hits compendium is as vibrant now as it must have been in the years after the band formed in 1981.

One can only imagine how wild the gigs were – the band variously appeared as jesus Christ nailed to the cross with blood dripping from fake hands, as the pregnant Virgin Mary, or as Lindy Chamberlain. Deliberately setting out to be provocative on stage, this carried over into the recorded sounds captured here, which are lyrically biting yet musically simplistic, as the best punk often can be.

Renowned as the “…ugliest, vilest and most loathsome four ‘musicians’ to scar a stage…” by Brisbane’s Courier Mail, songs like “Azaria”, “Run Ronnie Run” and “Death Comes to Townsville” are excellent repugnant, delivering the thrills that one would come to expect from such a group. With only thirteen songs clocking in at a tick over half an hour, the Black Assassins’ Greatest Hits rips with vibrant energy throughout.