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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
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Facet Squared (02:42)
Pride no longer has definition
Everybody wears it, it always fits
A state invoked for the lack of position
Strength is the bait that keeps us so busy
If it's perforated, then I tear it to bits
All sense lost in the frenzy
They should never touch the ground
Irony is the refuge of the educated
Always complaining but they never quit
Cool's eternal, but it always dated
They should never touch the ground
It's not worth, it's the investment
That keeps us tied up in all these strings
We draw lines and stand behind them
That's why flags are such ugly things
That they should never touch the ground
02 Public Witness Program (02:04)
The eyes have it and the eyes always will
The eyes have it and they're watching you still
Public witness charter - look out don't touch
Public witness says he's seeing too much
I like to walk around it
And i'm paid to stand around
Public witness seen it all
04 Smallpox Champion (04:01)
Smallpox champion u s of a
Give natives some blankets
Warm like the grave
This is the pattern cut from the cloth
This is the pattern designed to take you right out
This is the frontier with winter's so cold
Greed informs action where action makes bold
To take all the cotton that's cut from the stalk
Weave the disease that's gonna take you right out
What is good for the future what was good for the past -
Won't last
Bury your heart u s of a history rears up to spit in your face
You saw what you wanted
You took what you saw
We know how you got it
Your method equals wipe out
The end of the frontier and all that you own
Under the blankets of all that you've done
Memory serves us to serve you
Yet memory serves us to never let you wipe out
Cha-cha-cha-champion
You'll get yours
Wipe out
05 Rend It (03:48)
Why don't you come to my house
Why don't you drag me right out
Past all the shit that i said i'm saying
Why don't you cut up my mouth
And i don't care what you use
Just don't ask me to choose
I forced a field to allow you
That's not so easy to do
I said I said what I said I want you to help me
Surrender rend it it's yours
Out in the open
We're wide open
Night light comes into my room
Some shade of bruise-colored blue
Moves through my mind like a chemical
Imbalance on schedule
My tasting face to the floor
Passive abject i'm sure
I lick my lips when I need it
Don't want to lick them no more
My love song went wrong
08 Cassavetes (02:30)
Crush my calm you cassavetes
I was sitting tight so quiet quiet
In the dark till the lights came up my heart
Beating like a riot riot
Hollywood are you sitting on a sign
For someone to come on bust a genre
You poor city of shame
Ask me what you're needing
I'll sell you his name
cos he was the one to send it with truth
That's something from someone
And gena rowlands complete control for cassavetes
If it's not for sale you can't buy it buy it
Sad-eyed mogul reaching for your wallet
Like hand to holster why don't you try it try it
Hollywood are you waiting on a sign
For someone to come on bust a genre
You poor city of shame
Ask me what you're needing
I'll front you his name
cos he was the one to send it with truth
that's something from someone and gena rowlands
09 Great Cop (01:52)
Got a lot of questions for me
You got a lot of questions for me
Got your finger pointing at me
Distrusted
I look for wires when I'm talking to you
You'd make a great cop
11 Instrument (03:43)
That one is predetermined
That one, it finds another
This one comes in one window
Sliding out the other
We need an instrument to take a measurement
To find out if loss could weigh
We need to know value
We need to place value
In case it all comes true
Could it be loss could weigh?
It's always they that's dying
But now it's we that's dying
So sooner comes the trying to understand that loss could weigh
We've been dragged through the fire
We bragged about that fire
But suddenly we're tired
Could it be that loss could weigh?
Loss could weigh
12 Last Chance for a Slow Dance (04:38)
Coughing inside your coffin like at the bottom of the sea
Onside you're breathing too numb for asking so i will leave it outside your door
Warning the threat of morning that just extends you another day
Some lights were shining not much for seeing but you'll be leaving the way you came
Shot shooting
Shot shot
Shot shooting yourself again for what
To taste all the waste
Flare flakes a flower a burnt-out shower no one can see you were needing too shy for asking
So I will leave it outside your door pulse stalls uncut
But clotted when you had thought it would force a flow
Some lights were shining
Not much for seeing but you believe in the way you came
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Other reviews
By jeremy
The sound is aggressive, edgy, the dynamism is exaggerated by the singing that seems to run ahead of the music.
'Great Cop' is devastating, and Ian takes the opportunity to give a piece of his mind to the cops (there are never too many).
By Kurtd
From that day my life changed, I never gave it back to him, I listened to it for a week straight.
"Got a lot of questions for me... You'd make a great cop" - those lyrics so... so cool, yeah cool like Marco.
