Steady Diet of Nothing

How can anyone not love Steady Diet of Nothing? Like every Fugazi album, it’s in the running for their best, for its own unique reasons. Even Ian MacKaye cites this album as having his favorite Fugazi songs, which is evident by them being the songs they most often play live.

I’ve also heard complaints that Steady Diet of Nothing is simply a weaker version of Repeater, and even if that were true (Steady Diet of Nothing is higher quality), it’s a fair departure; the band exploring the reaches of the post-hardcore sound by making an album more inspired by free jazz—easily evident in the opening track, “Exit Only,” one of the band’s greatest songs. And Steady Diet of Nothing is full of “greatest songs,” where killer riffs and grooves abound. Steady Diet of Nothing also has some noise rock influence with bursts of feedback such as on “Reclamation” and the title track, “Steady Diet” (Fugazi had played and spent time with Sonic Youth by the time of the album’s recording).

The mixing is a bit too mid-level, however. Ian MacKaye explains this as necessity meaning the band had to produce their own album, but being the only member with experience in producing albums, didn’t want to make it come across as if he were the leader of the band. In the interview I read about this he has a neat bit where he talks about how to him, all of the songs sound like they have the guitars mixed up in the mix but he is aware that that is just because he stands by the guitars when they record.

It was neat, makes you think about how each member of a band on a stage is hearing a different song because the mix is different depending on where they stand. MacKaye proposed they do it vérité, a straight record with no effects or extensive studio work; what he called a democratic mixing job, with each band member roughly equal in the mix. Naturally, this made the mix flat, all of the instruments being a near-equal volume hurts the dynamics of the record, which is especially traumatic when your band has as strong an understanding of dynamic songwriting as Fugazi does. Still, the energy on Steady Diet of Nothing is undeniable.