Fugazi
In On The Kill Taker

THE REVIEW

There's a dead-end alley in the acid rain of October, wetting narrow sidewalks and collapsing exhausted into drains. A distant hiss draws attention like a sudden siren (danger!), Lally's bass advances venomously, a few insistent and confused notes explode in a powerful, necessary riff (Facet Squared). They are punches that bleed on a tall, black wall of lies in high heels. They are domesticated truths well-paid by the minstrels of misinformation. It's the usurious power that never wears out the master, that returns to twist around the neck and squeeze tight (Returning The Screw). It's a damp wall of populist writings and slogans, of servants and puppets theorists of nothing; peeing on it a bit helps diuresis and improves digestion. You readers, too, come calmly to the wall and imagine: finally imagine freeing yourselves in an associative gesture, on the parliament prostituted to the interests of a few, on this plutocracy masked as a banana republic, on the presumed Western superiority.

Doing it while listening to the Public Witness Program, in the company of two guys with asbestos balls like Ian MacKaye (guitarist and founder of the historic Minor Threat) and Guy Picciotto, for me, it's a good, right, and stimulating thing; let's say as much as a weekend in Valtellina with Caterina Murino. In short, these gentlemen have preserved a unique, inimitable, morally steadfast artistic integrity for twenty years. If then your modesty denies you a healthy and proud public pissing on the disgusting and moldy walls that often hinder our lives, change the review and move on; anyway, I'm almost done, and I've tricked you... In On The Kill Taker was a phrase from an old letter found by vocalist Guy Picciotto. Catharsis and imploded screams, voids and abrasive guitars (Rend It), intense and meditative slow-core that at 2'56'' turns into a visceral post-rock, post-noise, post-everything digression worthy of Sonic Youth (23 Beats Off), pulp/hardcore bullets of surgical and polemical precision sent back to the overbearing sender (Great Cop): "In On The Kill Taker" is the third great (perhaps very great) album by Fugazi from Washington D.C.

"..They should never touch the ground. Irony is the refuge of the educated, always complaining but they never quit. Cool's eternal, but it