In on the Kill Taker is the third full-length studio album by the American post-hardcore band Fugazi. It was released on June 30, 1993, through Dischord Records and was recorded at Inner Ear Studios and produced by Ted Niceley and Don Zientara. In on the Kill Taker captured the aggressiveness of the band's earlier releases while displaying a more diverse range of influences.
Due in part to the popularity of alternative rock in the early 1990s, In on the Kill Taker became the group's first album to debut on the Billboard charts and subsequently became the band's breakthrough album.[2]
Recording
Fugazi initially recorded material with producer Steve Albini at Chicago Recording Company with the intention of releasing an EP. The sessions produced an album's worth of material, but the band was unhappy with the result and re-recorded the material in Washington D.C., at Inner Ear Studios with producers Don Zientara and Ted Niceley. The original recordings have been since been bootlegged on filesharing networks.[3]
The Chicago sessions meant that Fugazi arrived well-prepared for the second recording. According to singer/guitarist Guy Picciotto, “I think we really worked much harder on getting the songs together. We did a lot more pre-session demos, not just with Albini, but also using an 8-track reel-to-reel that we had bought to record our practices. It really changed the way we were able to work out the songs. It also helped us school ourselves a bit on how to engineer a basic recording.”[4] The slightly more "polished" sound of the record was an intentional result of Niceley "reacting to what he [had] heard from the popular bands with the same DNA as Fugazi that were getting heavy airplay" at the time.[5]
Music and lyrics
The material on In on the Kill Taker retained the band's aggressive and rhythmic style, but displayed more diversity as well. Fugazi downplayed any conscious efforts to make Kill Taker more experimental or diverse. According to Picciotto “I don’t really think of any of the records as being any more experimental than any of the others, because to us they were all experiments,” he said. “We were just trying to figure stuff out and push ourselves further each time. So to my ear every record sounds like a step forward, or sideways, or at least somewhere else from the one before it.”[4] Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone labelled the album "a virtual encyclopedia of punk-derived musical styles" and recognized a large number of influences from bands such as The Ruts, U.K. Subs (for "Facet Squared" and "Public Witness Program"), Sonic Youth (for "Smallpox Champion"), Gang of Four (for "Cassavetes"), Pylon, "early" R.E.M. (for "Sweet and Low"), and even "the speedy hardcore sound" of MacKaye's former band Minor Threat (for "Great Cop").[6] "23 Beats Off" earned comparisons to an early Wire track "literally stretched and pulled out to nearly seven minutes, [as] MacKaye goes from singing (as best he can) to screaming about a man who was once “at the center of some ticker tape parade,” who turns into “a household name with HIV.”"[5]
Jason Diamond writing for Pitchfork noted that "[l]yrically, it’s also one of the more ambitious albums from the era. While burying any meaning beneath a pile of words like Cobain or bands like Pavement were so fond of doing was certainly du jour, Fugazi liked to mix things up. Picciotto flexed that English degree he got from Georgetown, while MacKaye’s muses were Marx and issues of The Nation."[5] The open-ended lyrics to the opening track "Facet Squared" "could either be about nationalism or the facades people wear when they go out in public [...]".[5] The Picciotto-written "Smallpox Champion" references the genocides perpetrated by the United States' founding fathers against native Americans.[7] The album's lyrics frequently reference films, in particular the song "Cassavetes" which is a tribute to actor/filmmaker John Cassavetes, as well as a critique of Hollywood culture.[8] The song "Walken's Syndrome" references Woody Allen's film Annie Hall, where Christopher Walken's character feels an urge to crash into oncoming traffic at night.[9]
Packaging
Filmmaker Jem Cohen, a long-time friend and collaborator of the band, was responsible for some of the album's art design and packaging. Found pieces of text and photographs were used to make up the overall layout. The cover image, showing a burned-out gold Polaroid of the Washington Monument, was found by Cohen in the street. The inner sleeve was a piece that Jeremy Blake,[10] a friend of the band, found tacked to a light post in Chicago. The text on the cover side margin and back cover were also found on the ground in New York City by Cohen and contained the phrase "...so I could have tried to put a stop to the hater, the adversary workers, iniquity evildoers. This is big because people in high places are in on the kill taker".[4]
Release
Released on the 30th of June, 1993, In on the Kill Taker was the band's first album to enter the Billboard 200, eventually peaking at #153.[11] The album also topped the independent charts of both NME and Melody Maker in the United Kingdom.[12]
Tour & popularity
By the time the In on the Kill Taker tour was underway, the group began to sell-out large auditoriums and arenas, as well as receive more lucrative major label offers. During the band's sold-out 3-night stint at New York City's Roseland Ballroom in September 1993, music mogul and Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegün met with the band backstage in an attempt to sign them. Ertegün offered the band "anything you want," their own subsidiary label and more than $10 million just to sign with Atlantic. Fugazi declined the offer.[13] The organizers of Lollapalooza also attempted to recruit the band for a headlining slot on its 1993 tour, which the band considered but ultimately turned down due to its tickets being priced at $33.[14] An article by The Washington Post published in August that year noted that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love – "rock's couple of the moment" – had attended a show of theirs in Seattle and even met the band afterwards. It also recounted a similar level of interest from Michael Stipe (who "dance[d] the hokey-pokey in the street in front of the Capitol Theatre with Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty") and Eddie Vedder (who wanted to know where MacKaye and Picciotto lived during a tour of Washington D.C.) as well.[12] A retrospective Pitchfork review from 2018 noted that in the article, "In on the Kill Taker isn’t brought up until somewhere near the bottom of the piece. It was almost like saying that you liked or knew them was like a badge of honor, it absolved you of your own sins. The music was eclipsed by the message."[5]
The record garnered rave reviews from many publications including TIME and Rolling Stone.[2]Rolling Stone writer Matt Diehl wrote that Fugazi had reclaimed the "only band that matters" label from The Clash.[6] In a year-end round-up of the best albums of the year, Brad Tyer of The Houston Press included the album and called the band "[t]he beating heart of punk rock."[22]
However, the album received mixed reviews as well. In an otherwise positive review, Jonathan Gold of Los Angeles Times thought that on the album, "Fugazi works in more or less the same meta-pop ballpark as Sonic Youth," and further stated: "Fugazi hasn't a whimsical bone in its collective body, and the lyrics dance around the gloomiest topics in oblique college-poetry metaphor."[15]Spin was even more dismissive, calling it "Fugazi's most rigid and predictable album yet" despite its "spunky moments", and criticizing their politics as being didactic.[23]
Legacy
Retrospective reviews
In on the Kill Taker is now widely seen as the band's breakthrough album. Joe Gross, an independent scholar, authored a book about the album as a part of the 33⅓ series of books dedicated to classic & influential albums, published by Continuum in 2018.[24] In its foreword, critic Rob Sheffield called it "a widely misunderstood album from a widely misunderstood band, and yet it's an album that lies right at the heart of their story."[25] Similarly, AllMusic critic Andy Kellman wrote: "It's probably Fugazi's least digestible record from front to back, but each track has its own attractive qualities, even if not immediately perceptible."[9] Writing for The A.V. Club in 2011, Kyle Ryan ranked it the best album of 1993, writing that it "showed Fugazi finding its equilibrium; it wasn’t that the band had outgrown its punk-rock foundation (and the community its members treasured); Fugazi had expanded punk’s palette."[26] In a very positive retrospective review, Jason Diamond writing for Pitchfork compared the impact of the album to Brian Eno's statement regarding The Velvet Underground's first album: "the hundreds of thousands of people who bought In on the Kill Taker or saw the band as they trekked across America, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, that year and beyond, were impacted in some way."[5] In 2021, Uncut wrote that the album "remains one of the finest records of the alternative-rock boom."[21]
"Public Witness Program" has been covered by Screw 32.[32] It is also the name of a band from Norway.[33] The band Cassavetes took its name from the song of the same name on this album,[34] as did the band Great Cop.[35]Plunderphonics musician Chris Lawhorn used 11 tracks from this album for his album Fugazi Edits.[36][37]Greg Saunier and André de Ridder along with Stargaze "re-composed" the album in its entirety under the title Instruments, which was released on Record Store Day, 2019.[38][39]Daniel P. Carter,[40] Laura Pleasants (Kylesa)[41] and Amen Dunes[42] have all called the album one of their favorites.
^Andrew Kelham (March 31, 2009). "TOP FIVE: DISCHORD RECORDS". Retrieved April 22, 2020. Ok, I first bought 'Margin Walker' and that was it for me. Fugazi fan for life. Although my favourite album by them changes regularly, I still find that 'In On The Kill Taker' comes round as the one I listen to most often. I think it's their most aggressive album and it really hits home with me. I bought it on cassette and vinyl the day it came out so that I could listen to it on the way home on my walkman. Don't laugh.
