In on the Kill Taker is the third studio album by the American post-hardcore band Fugazi, released in June 1993 through Dischord Records. It was recorded at Inner Ear Studios and produced by the band and Ted Niceley. In on the Kill Taker captured the aggressiveness of the band's earlier releases while displaying a more diverse range of influences.
Due in part to the popularity of alternative rock in the early 1990s, In on the Kill Taker became the group's first album to debut on the Billboard charts and subsequently became the band's breakthrough album.
Recording
The recording process for the album started in the fall of 1992, when Fugazi began working with producer Steve Albini: the band initially planned to release an EP, The slightly more "polished" sound of the record was an intentional result of Niceley "reacting to what he [had] heard from the popular bands with the same DNA as Fugazi that were getting heavy airplay" at the time. however, on March 6, 2026, Fugazi made the masters available in an official release, titled Albini Sessions (Benefit for Letters Charity), as a name-your-own-price download exclusive on Bandcamp, with all of the proceeds going to Letters Charity, a non-profit organization Albini volunteered with for decades.
Music and lyrics
Andy Kellman of AllMusic made note of what he considered to be "skinned-knee production values" present on In on the Kill Taker. The material on the album retained the band's aggressive and rhythmic style, but displayed more diversity as well. Fugazi downplayed any conscious efforts to make Kill Taker more experimental or diverse. According to Picciotto “I don’t really think of any of the records as being any more experimental than any of the others, because to us they were all experiments,” he said. “We were just trying to figure stuff out and push ourselves further each time. So to my ear every record sounds like a step forward, or sideways, or at least somewhere else from the one before it.” The album's lyrics frequently reference films, in particular the song "Cassavetes" which is a tribute to actor/filmmaker John Cassavetes, as well as a critique of Hollywood culture. The song "Walken's Syndrome" references Woody Allen's film Annie Hall, where Christopher Walken's character feels an urge to crash into oncoming traffic at night. a friend of the band, found tacked to a light post in Chicago. The text on the cover side margin and back cover were also found on the ground in New York City by Cohen and contained the phrase "...so I could have tried to put a stop to the hater, the adversary workers, iniquity evildoers. This is big because people in high places are in on the kill taker". The organizers of Lollapalooza also attempted to recruit the band for a headlining slot on its 1993 tour, which the band considered but ultimately turned down due to its tickets being priced at $33. An article by The Washington Post published in August that year noted that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love – "rock's couple of the moment" – had attended a show of theirs in Seattle and even met the band afterwards. It also recounted a similar level of interest from Michael Stipe (who "dance[d] the hokey-pokey in the street in front of the Capitol Theatre with Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty") and Eddie Vedder (who wanted to know where MacKaye and Picciotto lived during a tour of Washington D.C.) as well. A retrospective Pitchfork review from 2018 noted that in the article, "In on the Kill Taker isn’t brought up until somewhere near the bottom of the piece. It was almost like saying that you liked or knew them was like a badge of honor, it absolved you of your own sins. The music was eclipsed by the message."
|rev2=The Great Rock Discography
|rev2score=7/10
|rev3=Los Angeles Times
|rev3Score=
|rev4=MusicHound
|rev4score=
|rev5=Pitchfork
|rev5Score=8.6/10
|rev6=Q
|rev6Score=
|rev7=Rolling Stone
|rev7Score=
|rev8=The Rolling Stone Album Guide
|rev8Score=
|rev9=Spin Alternative Record Guide
|rev9Score=8/10
|rev10=Uncut
|rev10score=9/10
The record garnered rave reviews from many publications including TIME and Rolling Stone.
However, the album received mixed reviews as well. In an otherwise positive review, Jonathan Gold of Los Angeles Times thought that on the album, "Fugazi works in more or less the same meta-pop ballpark as Sonic Youth," and further stated: "Fugazi hasn't a whimsical bone in its collective body, and the lyrics dance around the gloomiest topics in oblique college-poetry metaphor."
Legacy
Retrospective reviews
In on the Kill Taker is now widely seen as the band's breakthrough album. Joe Gross, an independent scholar, authored a book about the album as a part of the 33⅓ series of books dedicated to classic & influential albums, published by Continuum in 2018. In its foreword, critic Rob Sheffield called it "a widely misunderstood album from a widely misunderstood band, and yet it's an album that lies right at the heart of their story." Similarly, AllMusic critic Andy Kellman wrote: "It's probably Fugazi's least digestible record from front to back, but each track has its own attractive qualities, even if not immediately perceptible." In a very positive retrospective review, Jason Diamond writing for Pitchfork compared the impact of the album to Brian Eno's statement regarding The Velvet Underground's first album: "the hundreds of thousands of people who bought In on the Kill Taker or saw the band as they trekked across America, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, that year and beyond, were impacted in some way."
|-
|Magnet
|US
|10th Anniversary Issue, Top 60 Albums 1993-2003
|35
|-
|LA Weekly
|US
|Top Five Best Post-Hardcore Records
|4
|-
|Kerrang!
|UK
|100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
|81
|-
|Terrorizer
|UK
|100 Most Important Albums Of The Nineties
| -
|-
|Rockdelux
|Spain
|300 Best Albums, 1984–2014
|191
|}
Influence, covers and tributes
Thursday singer Geoff Rickly has stated that In on the Kill Taker is his favorite Fugazi album. "Public Witness Program" has been covered by Screw 32. It is also the name of a band from Norway. The band Cassavetes took its name from the song of the same name on this album, as did the band Great Cop. Plunderphonics musician Chris Lawhorn used 11 tracks from this album for his album Fugazi Edits. Greg Saunier and André de Ridder along with Stargaze "re-composed" the album in its entirety under the title Instruments, which was released on Record Store Day, 2019. Daniel P. Carter, Laura Pleasants (Kylesa) and Amen Dunes have all called the album one of their favorites.
Track listing
All songs by Guy Picciotto, Ian MacKaye, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty.
Albini Sessions (Benefit for Letters Charity)
All songs by Guy Picciotto, Ian MacKaye, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty. Recorded and mixed by Steve Albini in November 1992. Mastered by T.J. Lipple in 2025.
|-
! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
|align="center"| 153
|}
Albini Sessions
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
! scope="col"| Chart (2026)
! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
|-
|}