Fugazi
Repeater

THE REVIEW

If ours were a better world, Fugazi probably wouldn't be remembered solely for their political image, for their activism, for their 6-euro concerts, for their 10-euro CDs, for their resistance to the arrogance of the major labels, for their lifestyle in the face of which all these heavily promoted pseudo-punk bands come off as schoolkids. If ours weren't a world turned upside down, Fugazi would be remembered for their songs, and forgive me if that's not a little.
Songs that in all possible worlds are monstrous hits except in ours, which can continue to go to ruin. Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto have simply, over the years, built the most valid post-hardcore mixture of the decade, artists of unrecognized greatness.

Formed at the dawn of the year 1987, and distinguished within that coarse and fierce East-Coast punk scene through numerous major experiences (notably MacKaye with the Minor Threat, negligible with the Teen Idles) and minor (Embrace, precursors of emocore, for better and for worse) Fugazi fly over the end of the decade and the entire span of the '90s through a dozen LPs of caliber and substance, developing over the years a path not linear to trends but opposed to them, riding styles through caresses and kicks in the ass.
Of these numerous works, the best remains the unsurpassed masterpiece at the cusp of the two decades, "Repeater".
Still very current, in it you can see the seeds that later germinated and the branches that were later cut from the trunk called Fugazi, an explosive mix of 30 years of rock and roll, in which they blend garage ("Merchandise") and punk ("Brandan n.1"), emocore ("Shut The Door") and raucous punk (the title track), funk and splashes of metal (the initial "Turnover"), unexpected melodic openings ("Reprovisional")... filthy attitude, above all, in body and spirit.
They will still be great, but never as great. A monument of the decade we left behind, an anthem to the joy of shouting in the ears of then and today's assholes.

I had a dream last night: I put on this CD and cranked it up to the max. Then there's a knock at the door: the police called by the neighbors demand I lower the volume. A fight ensues. Then, at the very moment the bass blast of "Greed" kicks in, I see one of them who just doesn't stop and starts dancing, and I dance with him, and we all dance with him. And we're all happy. And I hear him say that - damn - he should really buy the house next to mine, that they should really search my neighbors, because you never know, you might find a good excuse for an eviction notice.
Then I woke up, and "Greed" was over. It was just my world that was changing, at least in dreams.