Nirvana - Incesticide CD

NIRVANA (Seattle, USA) - Incesticide CD (1992) (Columbia House Edition - Geffen Records ‎– CGEFD-24504) Incesticide was released on December 15th, 1992 - a year and three months after Nirvana - Kurt Cobain, fellow Aberdeen weirdo Krist Novoselic, and ex-hardcore kid Dave Grohl—became one of the biggest bands on Earth ever. It’s an unlikely appendage to the globe-smashing Nevermind: Instead of rushing out another LP to further propel Nirvana to the extreme edges of perilous fame, they slid their fans a mixtape.  Incesticide is raw sparks to Nevermind’s pop explosion, collecting Peel Sessions, covers, demos, four different drummers, vocal sounds like dying feral animals, unabashed feminism, and yeah, a devil-horn-saluting cock-rocker called “Aero Zeppelin.”

The band’s label, DGC, didn’t intend to promote Incesticide much, clearly considering it a low-stakes time-buying placeholder. Nirvana took advantage of that. Allegedly the band only put it out because Cobain got to make the devastating cover painting and pen the thousand-word essay for its legendary liner notes, which were an indictment of toxic masculinity, a corrective of the exploitative media, and an ode to the underground. Incesticide embodies the free space of Punk more than any Nirvana album: part outsider visual art, part punk fanzine, thrillingly raw. 

At all the peaks of Incesticide, a Nirvana song is the same: music for outsiders among outsiders, a thread of connection among the disconnected, a friend screaming loud enough to reach inside your shell, empathic enough to ensure it doesn’t break. **originally published on pitchfork.com**