In Utero

Recorded in February 1993 at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, by Steve Albini, whom Cobain chose because he had produced Surfer Rosa and Pod. Albini had dismissed Nirvana as R.E.M. with a fuzzbox, but took the job because he felt sorry for them. At his suggestion the band paid for the sessions, and studio fees came to $24,000. Recording began on 13 February and took six days, and the first mix took five. Albini put about thirty microphones around Grohl's kit, and the drums for the faster songs, Very Ape and Tourette's, were recorded in a kitchen. Cobain reportedly recorded all his vocals in six hours.

After the sessions Cobain told Michael Azerrad that the grown-ups did not like it. In April 1993 Albini told the Chicago Tribune that he doubted Geffen would release it. Nirvana wrote to Newsweek to deny any pressure to change the album and reprinted the letter as a full-page ad in Billboard. Albini declined to remix it himself. Scott Litt remixed Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle in May 1993, and Bob Ludwig mastered the album. Albini later said that the record in the stores did not sound much like the one that was made.

The title In Utero came from a poem by Courtney Love. The cover is a Transparent Anatomical Manikin with angel wings added, and Cobain made the collage on the back. European and Australian copies carried a hidden bonus track, Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip.

The album came out on 13 September 1993 in the UK and 21 September in the US. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 180,000 copies sold, and at number one in the UK. Wal-Mart and Kmart refused to sell it, and a revised version in March 1994 changed the artwork and retitled Rape Me as Waif Me. It is certified six times platinum in the US and has sold 15 million copies worldwide. Time's Christopher John Farley wrote that Nirvana had not gone mainstream, Rolling Stone's David Fricke called it a triumph of the will, and NME's John Mulvey had doubts. It placed first and second in the album categories of the Rolling Stone and Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' polls. In 2011 Pitchfork's Jess Harvell called it the band's most harrowing statement. The Prodigy sampled the riff of Very Ape for Voodoo People in 1994. A 30th anniversary reissue on 27 October 2023 added the full 1993 show at the Great Western Forum and the 1994 show at the Seattle Center Arena.