Culled together from various short lived hardcore bands in Washington D.C. from the mid-80s, Fugazi was one of the greatest punk bands of all time. They kicked open the door with the punk anthem “Waiting Room” on their debut Fugazi, later coupled with their second release Margin Walker on the compilation 13 Songs.
Repeater was leaps and bounds above anything they or anyone had done before. Every song is a masterpiece of the band’s fatigued intensity. “Brendan #1” showed the band had a formidable rhythm section. The power of the band was their ability to turn any phrase or word into an anthem of pain, free will, truth, hatred, etc.
The three ultimate masterpieces are “Turnover”, “Repeater”, and “Shut the Door”. “Turnover” is a sedated hardcore of life on the edge capable of exploding and veering off into dangerous territory at any moment, as are the guitars. “Repeater” is the explosion, with bodies piling up one after the other in a sprawl of piercing guitars, seething testimonials, the rhythm of “Brendan #1”, and MacKaye’s poignant scream in the face of useless violence.
“Shut the Door” is the best of the best, the summa of the entire album; a story of learned helplessness through the greed, violence, consumerism, failures, and horrors in the preceding tracks. Each counterintuitive phrase MacKaye utters intones the personal torture that public torture inflicts long after the initial contact. “I close my eyes so I can see”; “I tie my arms to be free”; “I burn a fire to stay cool”; “Shut the door so I can leave”; all these phrases lead to the logical utterance “I burn myself, I am the fuel,” a downward spiral into drugs, violence, and any senseless depravity imaginable and a logical (quick) end of “She’s not breathing / She’s not moving / She’s not coming back.”
Repeater is by far their best collection of songs, but Fugazi never made a bad album, a couple others easily being masterpieces: Steady Diet of Nothing and Red Medicine.
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