In on the Kill Taker

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]

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]

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]

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]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[9]
The Great Rock Discography	7/10[15]
Los Angeles Times	[16]
MusicHound	[17]
Pitchfork	8.6/10[5]
Q	[18]
Rolling Stone	[6]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[19]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	8/10[20]
Uncut	9/10[21]

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."[16] 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]

All songs by Guy Picciotto, Ian MacKaye, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty.

Fugazi

• Ian Mackaye – vocals, guitar
• Guy Picciotto – vocals, guitar
• Joe Lally – bass
• Brendan Canty – drums

Technical

• Ted Niceley and Fugazi – production
• Don Zientara – engineering
• Chad Clark – 2004 remastering
• Jem Cohen – graphic concept, assemblage
• Jason Farrell – cover mechanic
• Cynthia Connolly – carry out photo
• The Spectra System – band photo
• Jem Cohen, Jeremy Blake – texts