Additional personnel: Kera Schaley (cello).

IN UTERO was nominated for a 1994 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

"All Apologies" was nominated for 1995 Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal and for Best Rock Song.

Nirvana: Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar); Dave Grohl (vocals, drums); Krist Novoselic (bass).

Includes liner notes by David Fricke.

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

Personnel: Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar); Kera Schaley (cello); Dave Grohl (drums).

Audio Mixer: Scott Litt.

Illustrator: Alex Grey.

Photographers: Michael Lavine; Neil Wallace; Charles Peterson ; Karen Mason; Kurt Cobain; Robert Fisher.

"Teenage angst has paid off well," growls Kurt Cobain on IN UTERO's opening fusilade, "Serve The Servants," suggesting that perhaps success has spoiled Nirvana. Not! IN UTERO is a howling, defiantly punkish recording, an unsentimental throwback to an era of garage band epiphanies and raw, unadorned rock and roll. On IN UTERO, Nirvana rails against both "alternative" conformity and polished notions of commercial rock with the anthemic rage of true outcasts.

Engineer-producer Steve Albini has enabled Nirvana to replicate the savage immediacy of their live sound--the sound of a band without commercial aspirations or pretensions, just thrashing away for the sheer joy of noise. Drummer Dave Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic play with heroic power as guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Kurt Cobain overlays their growling beat with shards of broken glass and shattered dreams.

On "Scentless Apprentice" each Cobain power chord is tempered by a series of calculated dissonances and melodic fragments, while the singer bares his vulnerability and anger through Nirvana's familiar soft-hard-soft-hard structures on "Heart Shaped Box" and "Rape Me." Through his crunching guitar and elliptical lyrics on various diseases and recoveries, Cobain lays bare the turmoil and resentments, the physical and mental ailments (self-inflicted and otherwise) that have colored Nirvana's notoriety. Instead of celebrating their success, Nirvana have fashioned a powerful cautionary tale on IN UTERO, to wit: that fame, acclaim and wealth are not liberating; that music like this cannot be produced on an assembly line, then be used once and tossed on a scrap heap; that life and music was a lot more fun when they were back playing for an audience of nine in some grungy club. IN UTERO is too strong and honest to ignore.

A Nirvana best-of that includes a previously unheard song; how much more of a no-brainer could you want? Admittedly, the trio that defined grunge--not to mention its contemporaneous generation of X'ers--wasn't around long enough to work up that extensive a discography. Still, who wouldn't relish the opportunity to have some of Nirvana's greatest tracks together on one disc (yes, completists, even the rarities collection INCESTICIDE ("Sliver") and the pre-fame album BLEACH ("About A Girl") are represented. And of course, such whisper-to-a-scream classics as "Lithium," "Come As You Are" and the ubiquitous, epochal "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are here.

Things quiet down a touch on the UNPLUGGED tracks (David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World, the IN UTERO hit "All Apologies"), but the intensity doesn't lessen a single iota. "Wait," we hear you cry, "what about that chilling live rendition of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" or NEVERMIND's haunting closer (hidden track aside) "Something In The Way?" You'll just have to wait for Vol. II (Courtney, are you listening?). By the way, the "new" track "You Know You're Right" is great, if not exactly revelatory.