Twenty Years On: Refused

On February 8th, 1992, Refused played their first show in Luleå, Sweden - a set which included at least two Gorilla Biscuits covers and songs that were lyrically finished and refined during the bus journey to the venue. On January 9th, 2012, after a fourteen year hiatus following their ground breaking third and final album - a release which subsequently broke them up - one of hardcore's most influential bands officially announced their reunion. Hopeful whispers of a reunion began to float around when "The Shape of Punk to Come" was given the triple disk treatment by Epitaph in 2010. The re-release of the 12 track masterpiece came accompanied by a furious live album and a DVD directed by guitarist Kristofer Steen, documenting the band’s dissolution and their final performances together before everyone realized just how good they were. As with Nirvana, Unbroken, or indeed any influential band that left the feeling of their story being cut short, it's hard to watch footage of them now and not quietly curse time, your own lack of prognostic vision, and the late-coming of the internet revolution for not being with them in those moments.

The Swedish quartet came rattling out of Umeå twenty years ago ready to disrupt alternative music completely (and would succeed in doing so, about seven years later). In a situation where a band breaks up in synchronization with the release of their most successful piece of work, it becomes hard not to romanticize them as a whole. It is easy to forget that Refused started out writing mediocre punk songs, often to the not-so-deadly-rhythm of a standard 4/4 drum beat. Tracks from The E.P. Compilation like “Cheap” remind us that Refused began under 80’s hardcore influences like Sick Of It All and Snapcase. The band have frequently been compared to New York leftist radicals Born Against, which is no coincidence considering Refused formed around the peak of Born Against’s career. Although these comparisons can't be ignored in regards to their foundations, Refused went on to employ different elements of expression which took that sound even further – building upon 80’s hardcore, rather than deviating from it.

Their second album "Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent" was an onslaught of twenty-something ambition which would develop over the next two years, building towards the birth of what would be their best and final album. Depending on how symbolic you want to get, "Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent" could be interpreted literally. Refused utilized their music to fan the flames of their own discontent, thus producing a third album which burst open like an over-packed suitcase containing piles of formerly neatly folded fury. And for those who do not care for indulgent symbolism, "Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent" stands, retrospectively, as a precursor for the following years.

The prophetically titled "The Shape of Punk to Come" harnessed the best of what 80/90’s hardcore had to offer and dragged it through a myriad of genres– cue jazz breakdowns, off kilter cymbal tapping, bewildering time signatures, guitar riffs that boarder on heavy metal, and hazy electro interludes – which makes the album sound progressive even by today's standards. Whatever they swallowed they spat back out with a passion, developing the method of tension and release which has become such an important feature within current hardcore song writing, and employed by the likes of Gallows, Dead Swans, and Converge to name a few. In "The Deadly Rhythm", for example, Refused release their anger out in conflict of tantrums and introspective silences. And why not add a free-jazz trumpet interlude?



What "The Shape of Punk to Come" provides us with is a string of cleverly crafted songs which communicate political ideas developed from the band’s previous releases, churning around in an endless cycles of boredom, protest, and liberation. For a group of guys who can barely stand one another by this point, they are completely together in the composition, feeding off their own tensions and aggression. The live album that comes with the re-release takes the songs, ups the tempo, and throws it all back with breakdowns of indigestible speed, showing us that the raw energy Refused managed to capture in the studio is just a portion of everything they have to offer.

Lyrically, Refused were motivated by political and philosophical theorists such as Michel Foucault, which becomes apparent as Lyxzén recites “Human life is not commodity” in his wonderful Scandinavian lilt during "Worms of the Senses/ Faculties of the Skull". Ironically, having announced their respective reformations within days of one another, it's hard not to think of At The Drive-In at this juncture. The lyrical stylistics of "The Shape of Punk to Come" can be picked out in "Relationship of Command" as Cedric Bixler-Zavala, in his own compounded way, shares Dennis Lyxzén’s outrage, gutturally expressed in repetition and rhetorical questions. To say that "The Shape of Punk to Come" paved the way for hardcore or post-hardcore music as we know it would be an overstatement, but it undoubtedly gave it a violent shove in the right direction. Even fourteen years after its creation, I challenge you to restrain yourself from jumping off any nearby surface or punching the air just as "New Noise" builds up to the renowned “Can I scream!”

There is, of course, the opinion that Refused aren't or weren't that original, that their style was a repetition, that their influence was overrated. Sometimes when something revolutionary comes along, it's hard to forget the movements that came before and helped to spur it on - without which said revolution would never have happened at all. It's not that "The Shape of Punk to Come" came completely out of nowhere, integrating a selection of ideas and styles that had never been attempted before – Refused did that to a certain extent, but it just so happens that every single track is absolutely brilliant, not just musically but idealistically. It clicked, basically. From the opening lyric “I got a bone to pick with capitalism and a few to break” to the final repetition “Throw a rock in the machine”, Lyxzén seems to push for some kind of political revolution, but in doing so he ended up with a musical one.

It still isn't clear whether Refused will be writing new material, and it's tempting to sit and think about what they could have produced if they hadn’t disbanded in 1998. We have been left with the climactic result of an exhausting seven year journey, a work of art which was, in the band’s own words, “a self-fulfilling prophecy”. With that in mind it seems that Refused accomplished all they wanted to with "The Shape Of Punk To Come", and broke at their peak like a fierce wave which has rolled through hardcore ever since. Now, in 2012, we finally have a chance to ride that wave in person - at Coachella, at Groezrock, at Primavera, at all the festivals and shows they intend to play this year - not just in the aching confines of bedroom-bound imagination.

- Emma Garland