Earlier this year Refused announced what was set to be their final festival performance in their native Sweden. The news was somewhat surprising, but ultimately the highly influential experimental hardcore band never actually got the chance to play that show, due their vocalist Dennis Lyxzén suffering “a massive heart attack” this past June.
Now the band are preparing to follow through on once again winding down their career, albeit this time on their times. When the group previously came to an end in 1998, they disintegrated on the road as internal tensions came to an ugly head. The cult favorites would later return 2012 and, releasing a pair of albums and taking part in touring in the years that followed.
That leads us up to now, where the group are once again ready to put Refused to bed. First up among their plans is a 25th anniversary vinyl reissue of their standout 1998 effort, “The Shape Of Punk To Come“. Epitaph will be issuing that pressing on November 08th. That 3-LP set will be limited to 2000 copies worldwide and will feature demos and alternative takes on songs, along with a bonus 12-song tribute album.
The latter will carry the title of “The Shape Of Punk To Come Obliterated“, and it will see various artists paying tribute to the aforementioned album with renditions of their own. The track listing for that will run as follows:
“The Shape Of Punk To Come Obliterated” track listing:
01 – GEL – “Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull”
02 – Quicksand – “The Liberation Frequency”
03 – Brutus – “The Deadly Rhythm”
04 – Snapcase – “Summer Holidays Vs. Punkroutine”
05 – Idles – “New Noise (remix)”
06 – Ho99o9 – “New Noise”
07 – Fucked Up – “Refused Party Program”
08 – Zulu – “Protest Song ’68”
09 – Cold Cave – “Refused Are Fucking Dead”
10 – IGORRR – “The Shape Of Punk To Come”
11 – Cult Of Luna – “Tannhäuser / Derive”
12 – Touché Amoré – “The Apollo Programme Was A Hoax”
Several of the artists involved with that tribute commented on their contributions to that tribute:
Walter Schreifels of Quicksand: “I’m honored that Quicksand was asked to be on this compilation. Liberation Frequency and The Shape Of Punk To Come are monuments to heavy music with a message and aesthetic that transcend the genre.”
Anaiah Lei of Zulu: “I’ve always been a Refused fan and even had the chance to tour with them back in 2012 with my old band. This record was definitely top 10 in my list of favorite hardcore albums and it was an honor to get to play a song off it. Especially this one because I’m like, y’all made this in the mid 90s? Way ahead of its time!”
Snapcase: “We were super excited when Refused asked us to take part in this project and it was a quick decision to choose Summerholidays vs Punkroutine. It’s collectively one of our favorite songs on the record and presented us with a unique challenge to get outside our comfort zone while mixing in elements of our own musical identity. Thanks for including us!”
Sami of GEL: “Refused was one of the first shows I went to and the first time I was up front. It was a charismatic performance and rowdy crowd and it definitely contributed to my love of heavier music and the live shows that demonstrate the energy of the music authentically.”
Refused themselves added:
“Whatever the record means to everyone else, it represents a remarkable time in our lives when we were young and devil-may-care, we were taking risks, wanting to prove our mettle, and more than anything else we want to celebrate that: the madness, the wild combinations, the pure creativity of it all.
So we asked a bunch of artists we love and respect to actually take liberties with the songs and either rearrange or deconstruct the material completely, to take the engine apart essentially and not be precious about it. And they weren’t, and to us this is the only tribute to our record that matters: heroes of ours, young guns as well as old friends and peers complimenting our music by uncovering new possibilities and new meaning within it.
These bands are all caviar for the general and we are honored they took time to be a part of this. Thank you all.”
Additional rarities included on that new pressing run as follows:
01 – “Summer Holidays” (instrumental demo)
02 – “Refused Are Fucking Dead” (instrumental demo)
03 – “The Shape Of Punk To Come” (instrumental demo)
04 – “Tannhauser Derive” (instrumental demo)
05 – “New Noise” (Straight Edge As Fuck compilation)
06 – “Worms of the Senses” (rehearsal tape)
07 – “The Deadly Rhythm” (rehearsal tape)
08 – “Blind Date” (rehearsal tape)
09 – “New Noise” (live)
For pre-orders, see refusedband.ffm.to/theshapeofpunktocome. In other news, the Refused have announced the dates for an early 2025 North American leg of their farewell tour. Quicksand will be out with them on that run, tickets for which will go on sale this Friday, September 13th at 10:00am local time.
Refused drummer David Sandström had the following to say of this forthcoming run:
“We were supposed to do this in June. Roll out our modest farewell run, starting with the Rosendal Garden Party in Stockholm and then doing a few shows here and there before calling it quits end of year. The rehearsals had been magnificent, the vibe was great and two days before the show we played a secret show at Kulturhuset Femman in Uppsala.
There were no pictures taken and it wasn’t filmed but it was a great show in front of maybe 60 local scenesters. We hung out afterwards, I had a few beers and me and Dennis, still vegan and basically straight edge, traded stupid stories about bands we love. It was a fine evening. Next morning I get a call from Dennis’ wife and a couple of tumultuous hours later it’s confirmed that he’s had a heart attack at the hotel.
We played our first show in February 1992. That same week George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin held a press conference at Camp David to declare that the cold war was over. That’s how long ago it was. It was so long ago that I can’t quite remember who we were that wintry Saturday when we piled into a car and drove up to Luleå to play 4 Gorilla Biscuits songs, a Shelter song, an AC/DC song and I think 3 original compositions to a crowd of 50-60 blind drunk northerners.
I had just turned 17, had never travelled outside of Sweden and by the time the band broke up in 1998 we had played over 500 shows all over Europe and the US. To say that the band changed our lives would be a gross understatement, and to say that we got to know each other in those seven years is as well.
A band that tours becomes like a family, especially when you do it in a van, with maps, scrambling to find a squat in Halberstadt where you were supposed to have started playing an hour ago. And family relations can be difficult. So it was with us.
That was partly why we wanted to give it another shot in 2012. We had made a decent splash in the nineties and the breakup had been very sudden and chaotic, there were feelings and they were not aired out and the whole thing had been such a shitshow that it was almost inevitable that we’d get back on the horse at some point. We wanted a do-over, to see what was still there, if anything, and what could be made of it. There’s a Neil Young song called ‘Buffalo Springfield Again‘ where he sings:
‘I’d like to see those guys again and give it a shot
Maybe now we can show the world what we got
But I’d just like to play for the fun we had’
And that was basically it. We gave it several shots between 2012 and 2024. We all have different takes on how it went and what the legacy of the reformed band will be, but personally I felt we couldn’t quite agree on what we were supposed to do musically, and we were still struggling with that when the pandemic hit. Kristofer felt that he’d done what he wanted to do and left the band in august of 2020 and although there was a delayed effect to the death blow, a death blow it was.
So in the beginning of this year we started making plans to have one last big hurrah, to make the end of the band a fun, generous, indulgent affair. And that’s how it felt after the first show, it’s the best we’ve ever sounded and we were really enjoying ourselves, tossing in old songs we haven’t played since the nineties and even a Misfits cover.
And then disaster struck. I visited Dennis in the hospital the day after he was admitted and true to form he was not happy about the hospital gown he was forced to wear. Hooked up to all these machines, unshaven with tousled hair, I swear the first thing he said was: (pointing to the gown) “I mean, this is not great”. I guess they don’t let you wear suits or Negative Approach t-shirts in the hospital.
So on to the good news: Dennis is doing great. He’s one of the healthiest dudes I know, he can’t sit still, exercises a lot and it follows that his recuperation would be swift. He’s gotten excellent care and his doctor has run all the physical tests on him and they all indicate he’s making a full recovery.
Needless to say, he’s itching to get back on tour to play shows and he even suggested we should keep preliminary dates set up for the late fall and winter, but we decided to postpone those shows and instead start up in the spring. So yeah, that’s where we’re at.
We’re coming to the US in March/April 2025 and we’re looking at what else we can do with the rest of the year, all we know is that we want to finish back home in Sweden at the end of the year. Let us know if there are songs you want us to play and we’ll give them a shot. Hope to see you out there.”
With Quicksand:
03/21 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
03/23 Toronto, ON – HISTORY
03/25 Chicago, IL – Salt Shed
03/27 San Francisco, CA – The Warfield
03/28 Los Angeles, CA – Shrine Expo Hall
03/29 Del Mar, CA – The Sound
03/30 Phoenix, AZ – Marquee Theatre
04/01 Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre
04/02 Salt Lake City, UT – Union Event Center
04/04 Boise, ID – Knitting Factory
04/05 Seattle, WA – The Showbox
04/07 Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
04/08 Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
04/10 Sacramento, CA – Ace Of Spades
