Background
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 in support of the group's previous EPs, 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".
The band once again chose to work with both Don Zientara and Ted Nicely 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 Nicely present between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. because Nicely was splitting his time between the studio and culinary school. Recording for the album was completed in September 1989.
The album's subject matter addresses a wide variety of themes such as greed, violence, sexuality, privacy, drug abuse and death. MacKaye told Guitar World that the album title "Is loaded on so many levels. It's actually about how things in life repeat over and over. But the title is also a rather obscure nod to The Beatles' Revolver. A record revolves and it also repeats. A revolver is also a gun, and so is a repeater. The title track is about kids repeatedly shooting each other. In Washington, D.C., in the Eighties, about 700 kids got killed during this crazy crack war."
Read more about this topic: Repeater (album)
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