I Refused hanno annunciato un nuovo scioglimento: dopo essersi fermati nel 1998 per poi riunirsi nel 2012, l’hardcore band svedese ha annunciato un nuovo stop dopo il tour del Nord America assieme ai Quicksand. Ci sarà anche un tour europeo d’addio?
Queste le parole dei Refused pubblicate sul profilo Instagram ufficiale:
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 some light touring 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 warm up show at Kulturhuset Femman in Uppsala. There were no pictures or video taken 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 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.”
Questa invece la tracklist di un tribute album di “The Shape of Punk To Come”, in occasione dei suoi 25 anni:
The Shape of Punk to Come Obliterated
Gel – Worms of the Senses / Faculties of the Skull
Quicksand – The Liberation Frequency
Brutus – The Deadly Rhythm
Snapcase – Summer Holidays vs. Punkroutine
Idles – New Noise (remix)
Ho99o9 – New Noise
Fucked Up – Refused Party Program
Zulu – Protest Song ’68
Cold Cave – Refused Are Fucking Dead
IGORR – The Shape of Punk to Come
Cult of Luna – Tannhäuser / Derive
Touche Amore – The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax
