Not For Sale Or Lease

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

PERFORMER: FUGAZI

ALBUM: IN ON THE KILL TAKER

LABEL: DISCHORD

THE BOTTOM LINE: A politically oriented punk quartet proves once again that nobody can buy its musical soul.

There's a paradox in being a rock-'n'-roll rebel. To succeed is to fail; the more records you sell, the more you're considered a sellout. Your raison d'etre is antiestablishment rage, but once your record goes platinum, you're forced to admit that a) you're now part of the problem or that b) maybe at least some of the people with a zillion dollars in the bank aren't all bad. Either way, everything feels compromised, corrupted. The phone rings. It's Philip Morris -- they want to sponsor your next tour, hold a cigarette giveaway in your name. And do you mind a double billing with Billy Ray Cyrus?

The Washington-based punk-rock band Fugazi was founded in 1987 on one principle: no sellout. Fugazi has never made a music video, never appeared on MTV's Beavis and Butt-head. They charge only $5 a ticket for their live shows and keep their CD prices between $8 and $10. Their music was grubby before grunge was grunge, featuring primal drum rolls, furious guitar feedback and more-leftist-than-thou lyrics. "You better start living the life/ That you're talking about," go the words to the group's 1988 song Bad Mouth. Despite this anticommercialism stance, or perhaps because of it, the band has a fair-size, near fanatical following of fans, many of whom seem to believe in a modified Copernican theory of the universe in which everything revolves around Fugazi.

, The band's new CD, their fourth full-length album, will not shock old devotees or disappoint initiates. The musicians -- singer-guitarists Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty -- don't stake out any new territory, but rather reassert claims to their favorite ideological and musical stomping grounds. The song Smallpox Champion is about invading whites purposely infecting Indians: "Give natives some blankets warm like the grave." 23 Beats Off addresses today's problems, comparing the private war of "a household name with HIV" to a military battle. The track stretches on for seven minutes, collapsing in on itself in a riptide of guitar distortion over a driving, martial drumbeat.

Despite a few innovative moments, many of the songs on In on the Kill Taker sound like tunes from the quartet's 1991 CD, Steady Diet of Nothing; and come to think of it, that album sounded a lot like the band's 1990 release, Repeater. Fugazi's greatest achievement, however, is not its music but its idealism. And idealism repeated over and over in the face of potentially corrupting success is a tribute to itself. Fugazi is living, punk-rocking proof that, as one of these new tracks says, "if it's not for sale, you can't buy it."