| Adam Pfleider |
03/31/10 09:14 AM |
Weekly Nostalgia: Refused
Aesthetically, no one wants to ever be told what to expect. If a sound is so far off course from the norm, sometimes we don't even retain what just hit us right away. Like any sort of genre-defying move, the ideas eventually get regurgitated and overly run into the ground, or the ideas stem from earlier ground that never surfaced and took notice on a major level first. Refused has written their history with their 1998 album, The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimercial Bombination in 12 Bursts. It was an album inspired by an inner circle of friends and musicians in Sweden who were constantly trying to out do each other creatively. Only two years before, the band released Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent. It was brash and influenced by 80's American hardcore and the "new school" hardcore of bands such as Gorilla Biscuits and Born Against. But it would be The Shape of Punk to Come that would change everything. Some punk traditionalists hated it, while others (across any sort of genre) embraced its ideas of combining jazz, classical, and punk into one delicious gumbo. Before it even had the chance to take off, the band up and called it quits, but the album and their legacy still lives on today. Rumors flew this week of a reunion, but it will be nothing more than a reissue of the now classic album that holds influence over so many. On the track "Tannhäuser /Derivè" vocalist Dennis Lyxzén screams out "So where do we go from here? Just about anywhere!" It's refreshing. That statement still resonates today. At least, I hope it does. Too bad Refused are fucking dead. Long live Refused.
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