“Merchandise.” “Waiting Room.” “Bad Mouth.” These songs should be familiar to fans of Fugazi, the great Washington D.C. post-hardcore band that makes you want to pull an Andy Bernard and punch a wall. They appeared on albums throughout the group’s influential career, and now we can hear what they sounded like two years before Repeater came out. First Demo is exactly that, a cassette that Fugazi used to hand out at concerts and is now being re-released.
The post-hardcore ensemble had recorded the demo at Arlington, Virginia’s Inner Ear Studios in January 1988 after having played only 10 shows, because they wanted to hear what they sounded like. The demo contains raw and reverberating versions of material that would later appear on the band’s first two EPs, which came out in 1988 and 1989, as well as its debut LP, Repeater, and 3 Songs EP in 1990. (Via)
Hear the whole thing below.