"In Utero", the fourth album by Nirvana, is a creepy little drop of virtrol that burns under singer and songwriter Kurt Cobain's itchy skin and never works it's way into the light. Two years ago, the band's "nevermind" album brought success beyond Cobain's expectations, and beyond his contentment. Pitched against the venality of big-time rock, the group suddenly found itself a part of the process, its fans not the allies the band would have chosen. "In Utero" is Nirvana's caustic response to it's success. "Teenage angst has paid off well," Cobain sings in the album's widely quoted opening lines. "Now I'm bored and old."

Dissonant and abrasive, the album is an unfriendly piece of work, as damning toward the band's star stature as toward it's audience; you're tainted just for wanting to listen in, There is an "I" in ever song, but each one is more guilty than the last: "I am my own parasite"; "I think i'm dumb"; "I take pride as the king of illiterature"; "I'm a liar and a thief"; "I'll take all the blame." Chastened by success, Cobain doesn't exorcise his demons, he gives them the best lines. The album is without empathy or catharsis; there's just this rotten skin we can't shake off. It's a small world, this album, impassioned but insular. And it is noble, but all too impaled on its own fiery principle. But sometimes rock's ignoble vulgarity-the naive empathy, the flashy catharsis-is what gives it room to breathe. "In Utero" is easy to admire, but perhaps harder to like.

-Written by John Leland