In 2012, 14 years on from their acrimonious split, Swedish hardcore giants Refused made a triumphant return for one of the year’s biggest and most successful tours.
Few anticipated they would ever see the likes of Refused again in the 21st century, but even fewer could have anticipated what was to follow.
2015 saw Refused release Freedom, a brand new studio album in which they freely experimented with their sound and turned their mighty pen to the modern world around them. It was met with divisive reviews and more than a few hostile comments about the band daring to make an album that wasn’t a carbon copy of the seminal 1998 LP The Shape Of Punk To Come. Lead singer Dennis Lyxzén even went on record to provocatively affirm that he felt Freedom was an even better album than The Shape Of Punk To Come – which, ironically, was one of the most punk things he could have done.
18 months have now passed, and Lyxzén is asked what he makes of the LP now as he nears the end of touring in support of it. “It’s funny I said all those things – I actually hate it now,” he quips sarcastically. “The process of every creative work is that you invest in it, you release it and you live with it for a while.
“I still love Freedom – after 17 years, it felt like the exact right record for us to make. I feel that, with this album, we were able to properly take control of Refused as a sort of entity. That was one of the most important things we wanted to get out of this album.”
Lyxzén says that control will change Refused’s live show. “We’ve got a much clearer idea of what songs work the best in the live setting, and in what way. The downside of that, of course, is if a song changes when you play it live, you start to pick up on a couple of things you would have changed about the studio-recorded version. There have been songs, too, where I haven’t initially been convinced that they would work, and they’ve ended up completely surprising me. It’s a fascinating process.”
Lyxzén speaking about Refused in the present tense after all this time is exciting, and that excitement only grows when he says the band will indeed be making a fifth studio album at some point – and no, it’s not going to take another 17 years for it to come out.
“We’re not in a hurry,” he says. “We’re not that type of band any more – we don’t have to be in a hurry. There is a definite plan, however. There is material that we have in the works, and bits and pieces that we’re fiddling about on. It might not happen right away – after this last bit of our tour, the four of us are all going to go work on some other different projects for a while. It will happen, though.”
Refused were formed in 1991 in Umeå, a riverside town in the north-east of Sweden. Only Lyxzén and drummer David Sandström have seen the band through every incarnation of its lineup since the very beginning, although the other half of the group – guitarist Kristofer Steen and bassist Magnus Flagge – worked with Refused for various periods throughout the ’90s.
It goes without saying that a whole heap of things concerning Refused and the world around them have drastically changed since those early beginnings – the shape of punk has shifted countless times over, and their defining opus ‘New Noise’ is now old enough to drive a car. What is perhaps most fascinating, however, is what hasn’t changed. In fact, many of the key political issues and radical ideals that defined the band’s earlier work are more pertinent now than ever before.
“It’s surprising – you always think in your heart of hearts that things are going to get better,” Lyxzén says. “When we were writing these songs in the ’90s, we were writing about what we felt like were the worst-case scenarios. You’re an artist, y’know – you’re prone to exaggerate. You amp it up to 11 to get your point across. You don’t hit people over the head with a feather, you hit them with a brick.
“When we got back together in 2012, I think one of my main concerns on my mind was how I was going to perform these songs with the same conviction as I did when I first wrote them. Reading the words, it hit me: ‘This is still fucking valid today.’ Sure, there’s a couple of lines that 40-year-old me wouldn’t have written, but I remember back to being a young punk and it all makes sense again. Politics have failed us because it has not lived up to the idea of benefiting people. It’s invested in power. It’s invested in capitalism. The election in America, in Sweden, in Australia… it’s a freak show. Music and art has to prevail, because it has to fucking outlast politics.”
Lyxzén and co. are about to return to Australia for Refused’s second-ever headlining tour here, following their hugely acclaimed run in November 2012. Although Lyxzén has visited Australia several times, including at the helm of retro rockers The (International) Noise Conspiracy, and as a special guest of The Bloody Beetroots (yes, those Bloody Beetroots), Refused never made it Down Under until their initial reunion run. As anyone who was at one of those shows can attest, it was more than worth the wait.
“[Those shows] came at the end of a really intense year,” Lyxzén recalls. “It was just so gratifying to see how into it all the people at those shows were. That show in Sydney, those two nights in Melbourne… I’ve been to Australia a lot, and I can honestly say those were some of the best shows I’ve ever done here.
“When it came time to plan touring for Freedom, Australia was at the top of the list – it was actually one of the first places we were supposed to go. Everything, as you know, got cancelled, so we just pressed on. We actually finished touring a few months ago, and that was originally supposed to be it. We knew we couldn’t leave out Australia, though.”
Joining the Swedes for the entire run will be Melbourne noisemakers High Tension and veteran punks Sick of It All, whom Lyxzén and his bandmates grew up idolising.
“I started my first hardcore band in 1989,” says Lyxzén. “We just wanted to sound exactly like Sick Of It All. As time has progressed, they’ve become peers – we go hang out every time they play Sweden. I thought it was crazy talk to ask them to join us as the support for this tour, but they immediately said yes. It’s such an honour and a privilege for us. They set the fucking template for what I wanted to become.”
[Refused photo by Dustin Rabin]
