Rocktrospectiva: The Cult-Classic "Repeater" Turns 35

Released on 19 April 1990, "Repeater" was the full-length debut studio album by the American post-hardcore band Fugazi. It was recorded at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia, and produced and engineered by Don Zientara and Ted Niceley.

Repeater is often regarded as a definitive album for the band and a landmark of rock music and also been noted for its complex interplay of guitar and rhythm section. By 1989, Fugazi had made the transition into jamming on and writing new material as a band as opposed to playing songs composed solely by singer/guitarist Ian MacKaye. After the completion of several lengthy U.S. and European tours, they began to work on new material as well as refining songs that they had already been performing live, such as "Merchandise" and "Turnover" - the latter of which was originally titled "NSA" in its original form - featuring MacKaye on vocals.

The band once again chose to work with both Don Zientara and Ted Niceley as they had previously, and entered Inner Ear Studios in July 1989 to begin the recording process. The group was only able to record with Niceley present between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. because Niceley was splitting his time between the studio and culinary school. Recording for the album was completed in September 1989.

Repeater is where the already lock-tight Fugazi raised the bar it already set with an angrier, faster, tighter denser modus operandi than anything demonstrated on either of the band's previous two EPs. The album's third track "Brendan #1" is instrumental and the sixth track "Sieve-Fisted Find" is said to contain "furious miniature guitar riffs that interlock." The album's subject matter addresses a wide variety of themes such as greed, violence, sexuality, privacy, drug abuse and death, mainly it's actually about how things in life repeat over and over. The title track is about kids repeatedly shooting each other and references the crack cocaine-related violence in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s

The album did not initially reach the Billboard 200 charts or become a commercial success. However, the band spent most of 1990 and 1991 touring heavily, performing a total of 250 concerts between March 1990 and June 1991, routinely selling out 1,000+ capacity venues all over the world. The band mixed the raw independence of Black Flag and the political insistence of Gang of Four according certain medias. 

But while major labels began to court Fugazi, the band decided that Dischord was distributing their records well enough and refused the offers. The album influence mainly on alternative rock culture featured on the sound that predated significant releases such as Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten, which would unexpectedly go on to break the genre into the mainstream.

 

Repeater Track List: 

 

1. Turnover

2. Repeater

3. Brendan # 1

4. Merchandise

5. Blueprint

6. Sieve-Fisted Find

7. Greed

8.  Two Beats Off

9. Styrofoam

10. Reprovisional

11. Shut The Door