Refused is a Swedish hardcore punk band whose initial career was as brief and frenetic as their music. Formed in Sweden in 1991, the group lasted for 7 years before releasing their third album, The Shape Of Punk To Come, and then surprising everyone by breaking up two months later.
For a group whose demise was announced by the way of an announcement simply titled ‘Refused Are Fucking Dead’, countless fans were shocked when Refused’s members announced a reunion tour in 2012, a feat many were sure would never occur.
Refused were greatly underappreciated in their time, with many fans only starting to appreciate the band due to the legacy they had left behind. Many of the popular punk rock groups of the last two decades, such as Rise Against, AFI, and La Dispute all cite Refused as one of their greatest influences, and if you’ve ever listened to triple j’s Short.Fast.Loud. program over its history, you would no doubt have been introduced to their classic track ‘New Noise’, which frequently gained some airplay.
Following their 2012 reunion tour, Refused decided to continue the band, picking up where they left off, and recording a new album. Now, in late 2016, the group are ready to tour Australia for their second time since their reformation. With their new album, 2015’s Freedom, in their catalogue, the group are ready to bring their influential sound to the salivating masses once again. We were lucky enough to have a chat with Dennis Lyxzén, lead singer of Refused, ahead of their trip to Australia in January of 2017.
For a man whose legacy is that of screamed vocals and frenzied, dangerous stage antics, Dennis Lyxzén is a relatively softly spoken person. With a gentle laugh, he kicks off our interview by talking about how great it is to be playing music with the members of Refused again.
“It feels great,” he admits. “I think we’re all in a stage of our lives where it if it didn’t feel great we wouldn’t be doing it. We are, for lack of a better word, artists, and we like our art to be genuine, exciting, and inspiring. Since 2012, it’s been only good times, I have to say.”
“2012 was like, y’know, it was nostalgic, but I call it a victory lap. Now, it’s a different kind of work. When you have a new record out, you’re playing on the new record, and not living just on some past triumphs; it’s a bit different. Working hard also makes us connect in a different way, 2012 was almost too easy.”
As with many punk groups, Refused took a political stance in a lot of their music, and with an almost two decade gap between drinks, Dennis believes the group still has a strong connection to the music they released all those years ago. “Its a lifetime ago,” he explains.
“The Shape Of Punk To Come came out eighteen years ago. We wrote and recorded it eighteen years ago, I mean, we’re different people. Some of the ideas, I can’t even remember how I was thinking when I wrote that song, and you have to make it into something that’s relevant to something here and now.”
“I was surprised in 2012, when we started practicing, how relevant a lot of the lyrics still were. I mean, that’s kind of what you’re worried most about; when you’re young you’re kind of a stupid asshole and thinking ‘what was I writing?’ But looking at it now I’m thinking, ‘that’s actually pretty fucking good’.
It seems like plenty of folks agree with just how good the material they have made is. In fact, Refused’s The Shape Of Punk To Come has been cited as one of the most influential and important records in not just punk music, but of all time. As anyone could imagine, recording a follow up to a record of that calibre would be an immensely daunting task. However, as Dennis admits, the group focused more on just making the music that they love.
“I don’t think we thought that much about the output pressure, it was more about pressuring ourselves and pushing ourselves. I felt that with every show I ever played in my entire life, you never half-ass it. If you want to do something, do it fucking full-on. One of the things about playing music is that you can do something full on and people go and be like ‘Eh, we don’t really care’.”
“Or people really connect, and that’s something that can be really nerve-wracking, but at the same time it’s what I’m super proud of. I mean, seventeen years, people have been living with The Shape Of Punk To Come for a very long time. To go up against that, it’s like going up against the ghosts of your past, and I think we did it and I think we did it well.”
Similarly, Dennis doesn’t feel too much pressure from the fans who have spent their lives listening to Refused’s legacy. “People connect to things differently, and you can’t worry about that,” he states. “You have to worry about creating new art that you can be proud of.”
“When you get older, you look back at your life, and think ‘What did I do? Did I fucking keep the line, or did I try to listen to what other people were expecting us to do?’. You have to go out there with the intention of making the best record that you can make for yourself, and I think that’s what we did, and I’m stoked that people liked it, it’s fucking fantastic.”
Refused’s legacy has inspired countless fans around the world, and numerous bands have sprung up based upon their admiration of Refused, but Dennis doesn’t particularly see himself in these other bands. “It depends on what band it is,” he points out. “I mean, Duff [McKagen] from Guns ‘N’ Roses said he loved Refused and I thought ‘eh, I can’t really see that’, but some bands I think ‘yeah, I kind of get that’. It’s always a bit surreal, because you do what you do, you live your life and your life is always moving forward. “
“Sometimes it’s hard to connect to that, when someone’s like ‘I love your band, it changed my life’, and I don’t know what to say. It’s so flattering and so humbling but it’s hard to even process it. Then when people are like ‘I hate you’, I think ‘Okay, I can relate to that feeling.’”
“When people love what you’ve done, I’m like ‘Holy shit, that’s so weird’, but it’s super flattering and super humbling. It makes me proud that a bunch of working class kids from the north of Sweden, we created music that’s been resonating music that’s been resonating all over the world for the past 20 years and it’s just unbelievable.”
Praise has come from many places for Refused over the years. In fact, in 2010, Italian electro-punkers The Bloody Beetroots got Dennis to guest on their song ‘The Church Of Noise’, which was, for all intents and purposes, a electro-clash remake of Refused’s ‘New Noise’. While Dennis admits he’s mainly stayed with rock music, it’s clear he’s not exactly averse to trying out new things in his musical career.
“If you look at my personal history of what I’ve done, I’ve been all over the place,” he notes. “But I’ve mainly been with rock music. I’ve done everything from weird power pop to awkward singer songwriter projects. I try a bit of everything and I’m a curious person, and I’m not one-dimensional. I always have a hard time with bands when people are like, picking up a formula and that’s what they do. I’m too restless for that, I’m not interested in art that way; I’m always wanting to try new things.”
“I’m releasing a new record with my band INVSN next year and it’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before. It has an electronic influences and it’s also very rhythmical, hardly any guitars, everything very drum and bass, and tribal almost. But I always want to try new things, I mean, who know what the next Refused record is going to sound like? It’s always a work in progress; it’s always new ideas that you want to try.”
Refused were set to tour Australia in early 2016 as part of the ill-fated Soundwave festival, but now, fans have the chance to see them perform headline shows around the country with punk stalwarts Sick Of It All, and Aussie band High Tension. As it turns out, Dennis is actually a pretty big fan of Aussie music too.
“In terms of contemporary bands, there’s a couple of good bands from Australia, I really like the band, I think they broke up, called Slug Guts. There’s other stuff, but as far as the musical history of Australia, I love so many Australian bands, I don’t even think you know. I have a section in my record collection that’s just Australian music, I’m a huge fan of Australian music.”
Who knows just what music he’ll find when Refused return to Australian shores in January.
