"So much more than a band"

Happy 30th birthday (for yesterday) to Repeater. Fugazi's debut full-length LP remains a cult classic, incontrovertible evidence (as Angus Batey argues in this 2015 piece for the Quietus) that they were "forging something new" and well on their way to becoming one of those bands who - in the words of the Minutemen's Mike Watt - "could be your life".

That said, for me Repeater sounds very much a stepping stone, a route marker pointing the way towards something more exciting and innovative. Nothing will sway me from thinking (or knowing) that their third album In On The Kill Taker, released three years later, is their masterpiece. I've claimed as much before, when endorsing the retrospective reappraisal written by Jason Diamond of Pitchfork, and am doing so again in the course of directing you to the site's Liner Notes feature on an LP whose aggression and ambition are beautifully balanced.

Wherever you stand on the relative merits of their records, though, the truth of Batey's conclusion rings true: "They never broke up, just like they never sold out: and they remain the one band you feel for sure will never let you down."