Emerging at a time in the mid-nineties when the ideology of punk first appeared to be drowning in a swamp of commercialism, Refused were a band who stood by its key values of individuality and independence both musically and politically. Formed out of the cultural vacuum provided by a society with no real sense of art or humane politics, they were held together by a fervent determination to rise above conformity, challenging the orthodox and rebelling against a hardcore scene which was gradually selling out these ideals in favour of formulaic nostalgia trips.
Although by their standards Refused’s early tracks sound like mere slabs of uninspiring hardcore, when you actually listen to this collection of early EPs on ‘E.P. Comp CD’ (bizarrely re-issued minus ten recordings available on the original pressing) the quality is seriously good enough to lift them above most of the current major players. And despite most Refused fans refusing to even acknowledge its existence, lined up against such mid-nineties peers like Biohazard and Born Against it’s more than apparent how easy it would’ve been for them to pursue that formulaic route, the tracks bulging with enough pit-stomping muscle to guarantee a high-billing on an Eastpak Resistance or Warped Tour had they been just recently released.
But for these Swedes it wasn’t enough.
It was only on ‘Songs to Fan The Flames of Discontent’ that they were to start finding their feet and the album opened with a fiery statement of intent: “I’d rather be dead than alive by your social values / I’d rather be dead than alive by your tradition”, screamed Lyxzén on the album opener ‘Rather Be Dead’. It was a visceral, heart-pounding energy that carried on throughout the album, the following track ‘Coup d’Etat’ bustling with high-energy grooves that shift and slide around electrifying rhythms, raging guitars and a fierce polemical bite. Such a style would later be incorporated into the creative mindset of scene-breakers Snapcase, Snot and Amen yet, as adventurous as it was at the time, it took a radical overhaul of their sound to achieve the level of experimentation that ‘The Shape of Punk To Come’ was to present a year later.
After five years of toil and inner tension it was with this immense 12-track swansong that Refused finally came into their own. Explosive, complex and ultimately revolutionary it’s a shattering foray into futuristic hardcore innovation, each track seemingly soldered with all manner of samples and electro glitches that was far too audacious for the hardcore fraternity of the time. Which probably goes some way in explaining why it was for the most part overlooked and shunned by the mainstream, but, like other such bands, it was only after their demise that they were to become recognised by pretty much every musician in the field of progressive heavy music – from Deftones to Minus and even Metallica– as one of the most important bands of the 20th Century.
Just take ‘Poetry Written In Gasoline’ as it beautifully melds freeform jazz with a frittering aggression while ‘New Noise’ - as voracious and dynamic a track you’ll ever hear from a modern rock band – pounds the speakers with a splintering post-modernist mix of sounds.
A gloriously defiant statement of independence ‘The Shape of Punk To Come’ is a timeless insurrectionary masterpiece and, once again, an earth-shattering wake-up call to the hardcore-punk movements of today.
Well done, you've missed the point
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Re: Well done, you've missed the point
Whether or not I'll personally be listening to Refused in ten years time I'm sure that very few other 'hardcore' or 'punk' acts will be making music anywhere near as challenging as Refused. It was very much ahead of its time and, as such, stands out in a league of its own. That is what makes it so timeless, that its content and its message will never be outdated.
Re: Well done, you've missed the point
a few hardcore riffs interspersed with some crap electronic parts wrapped up in some pseudo revolutionist artwork, does not make something pioneering.
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Re: Well done, you've missed the point
literally.
in lessons on my md player also.
sorry about the length of this. i get carried away
I'll no doubt be seen as picky, and I don't mean to take away from a review, and subsequent discussion by Mike that I largely agree with. I love this album. Or rather, and this sounds silly I know, but I like the feeling the album gives me rather than the album itself. I know this sounds like an old argument, but I continue to find it upsetting that a place in the musical canon is still widely regarded as the height of success. Unfortunately, those musicians that don't get deleted and forgotten by all but a few hardcore fans, by definition, tends to consist of what to my ears is watered down boredom-on-wax rather than genuine experimentalism. However, I'd argue that, much more than the result of corporate cynicism, this situation is the product of the "classic" credentials placed on certain acts by lazy music critics who are unable to get a long-term picture of their role in shaping the music industry, have a painfully tame taste in music, and are willing to swallow outdated, conservative ideas about "culture" and "taste". This isn't just bad for individual artists, but bad for musical innovation in general - if it doesn't sell, because the right people don't shout about it, musicians are forced to compromise or give up.
This site is often a welcome exception in its anti-mainstream stance, but even so, virtually every available publication, even those that are supposed to be "radical" keep up this pretence that there's such a thing as "objectively good" or "classic" music. I'm sure we all find ourselves doing it, but it is, honestly, bollocks. Though Refused specifically claimed to share this point of view, they still gabble on about 1960s and 70s French philosophers as if it makes their message more credible, and seem to base everything they say in their "communiques" on early 20th century Frankfurt School Critical Theory, which is for the most part hysterical, hostile and contemptuous, and relies on so many unrealistic "revolutionary" mantras that it turns out as a mirror image of conservatism. This is why, though I enjoy Refused's music, I've always seen them as faintly comical faux-radicals.
See the Observer Music Magazine's latest 100 British records of all time. I assume anybody reading this site will think the magazine is shit anyway, but when you think about it, the idea of being able to lump creative activity spanning large periods of time, and wildly different circumstances into one category, "music", and then placing it in order of "greatness" is nonsensical conservative bullshit. Each time you get the same old things pulled out from under the bed: The Stone Roses, The Beatles, The Smiths: "safe" choices for people who have no desire to go out and find new, exciting sounds. This is all just conservatism masquerading as "cool": reassurance for people who want to be comfortable that they are listening to, and copying, the "right" music. The point is that suggesting that people can't be blamed for this does not mean we shouldn't try to change it. As far as I'm concerned, the Beatles, through no real fault of their own, terminally damaged the music industry as much as they revolutionised it, because Beatlemania really consolidated the arbitrary, hype-driven, reactionary, retrospective religion that "popular culture" has become: "cool", "good" or "true" is always just another type of dogma. The reason this is so virulent is that there is no corporate conspiracy, it is simply the cumulative effect of an endless series of acts of inculcation and complacency.
I'm just worried about Refused turning into the very thing they would have hated - a band whose name people brandish as a badge of credibility. They had always seemed to be an exception to this. On the other hand, I'll have to hear Born Against before deciding whether they Refused were rip-off merchants, but you also have to realise that refusing to like Refused just because they were influenced by earlier artists that you've heard of and others haven't (and this isn't an accusation against anybody in particular, but something I find myself doing) is as affected and shallow as borrowing taste from a magazine.
One of the best ways that websites like this can fight the hierarchy and inertia in creative activity is by trying not to maintain the fiction of "timeless music". The obsession with the timelessness and greatness of certain artists genuinely impedes the process of musical innovation. Different types of music are listened to for different reasons, and go in and out of fashion, and personally see no point in even comparing them - just tell people what they sound like, how they make YOU feel, and what relation they have to the music industry and creative processes in general. There is still plenty to talk about without maintaining the mythology of transcendent "goodness" or encouraging people to rank things.
Rant over.
I am listen Refused. It is nice.
Re: Well done, you've missed the point
Other things don't.
Luke Younger is still a complete and utter elitist, clueless dickhead. Hoorah.
Re: Well done, you've missed the point
i am going to cover iron man in a folktronic stylee.
and hendrix was way more 60s
Re: Well done, you've missed the point
Personally, I now find Nirvana almost unlistenable, but this is not a comment on how "good" they are, just that I, personally, don't like them anymore. I have no problem with people not liking the same things as me, but I do have a problem with the inflation of culture into a kind of pernicious religion which is so pervasive that people don't know they are practising it, and even try and defend it when people are trying to make their lives easier by undermining it. The reason it is so pervasive is that there is nobody that is "right" or "stupid", but the myth that they are comes at us from all angles: we are taught it in school, by our parents, by politicians, and even most of the social theorists who ultimately feed them, because nobody has thought of a genuinely new philosophical paradigm since the 19th century! It's all bullshit. "Art" is no more "real" than "God", and in the words of Miocene, "tradition is just another name for the collective habit."
I know people mistake this view for "postmodernism", or even nihilism (it's neither), but I don't see the point of trying to put objective labels onto anything (note the distinction between a name and an "objective"/"true" state of affairs - this is the problem of left-wing politics: social fundamentalism). Far be it from me to tell what people to like or dislike. The point is that we shouldn't confuse a perfectly legitimate commitment to relativism in taste with the satisfaction that we are all "right".
What I'm ultimately talking about is having concern for the long term ability of musicians to do what they want and make a living from it, without having to make the choice between compromising because of corporate constraints, or remaining in obscurity and/or poverty, and a society in which people don't have this constant anxiety over whether or not they are listening to "the right" music.
Don't even dare deny it. If you didn't have it you wouldn't be reading this website.
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stick it to the man, you crazy lefties.
would love to hear it on SACD tho.
and has "this just might be the truth" been reissued? totally agree with matt about the early stuff.
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fucking love it all the same.
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Maybe we should ask why have you typed several long screeds on this subject. Is it because you want to be seen as an intellectual torch-keeper who has never indulged (and would never indulge) in something as churlish as name dropping?
Your comments have indeed been extremely valuable and wonderfully erudite, and personally I thank you for that. However, you have shot yourself in the foot by whipping around on others who have different comments than your own (such as your petty 'grow up' comment). If some of the people here have an agenda that consists of 'name dropping', what is YOUR agenda? And what in hell makes it more valid?
It's a music site, Chiaroscuro. People are always gonna name drop, puffing out their chests in an attempt to be an avatar of musical knowledge/taste. But surely this is part of the fun, non? I mean, if no-one indulged in name dropping, you would have no real context in which to place some of your earlier rants.
In short, if some on this board need to grow up, you certainly need to relax a little. Don't be so suspicious of people.
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Sure. Its just funny when people do nothing but name drop - as if it somehow comprises a coherent argument. I was really trying to expose the hypocrisy of Refused's position, but also suggest how this site might more productively follow their more useful suggestions, which most people pass over.
Maybe we should ask why have you typed several long screeds on this subject. Is it because you want to be seen as an intellectual torch-keeper who has never indulged (and would never indulge) in something as churlish as name dropping?
Yes you should ask. I don't especially want to be seen as anything. If I did I wouldn't be anonymous. I wrote long passages principally because I genuinely care about progressive politics, and the long term state of the music industry, and trying to encourage people make the situation better for everyone. This is for purely selfish reasons. If everybody else is happy, they will have no reason to piss me off. I also find writing things down allows me to get my ideas clearer in my head. If I could make the argument any shorter I would, but I get carried away. And of course I name drop, just not in places where people are knowledgeable enough to know I'm manipulating them, like this site! Believe it or not, despite appearing pretentious, I have no desire to insult people's intelligence. If you found it interesting or helpful, that's enough for me.
Your comments have indeed been extremely valuable and wonderfully erudite, and personally I thank you for that. However, you have shot yourself in the foot by whipping around on others who have different comments than your own (such as your petty 'grow up' comment). If some of the people here have an agenda that consists of 'name dropping', what is YOUR agenda? And what in hell makes it more valid?
It's a music site, Chiaroscuro. People are always gonna name drop, puffing out their chests in an attempt to be an avatar of musical knowledge/taste. But surely this is part of the fun, non? I mean, if no-one indulged in name dropping, you would have no real context in which to place some of your earlier rants.
Yeah, sure, of course. We're all hypocrites, me included. Valid criticism duly taken onboard. We all have our weaknesses, I don't pretend to be perfect. If I was, I'd be even more irritating. But when somebody is so clearly engaging in petty musical one-upmanship, I get frustrated. I really see no reason for it. Ultimately I'm trying to suggest that we would all be better served if we didn't feel we had to do it at all. Anybody has a right to an opinion, but answer me this, is it really that much fun to feel like you're constantly engaged in a kind of intellectual fight with other people? Surely only if you feel you've won the argument? If not, you have to go off and do some more frantic underground music revision, ready for your next battle of wits. If there's no argument to win, we might be able to learn something from each other.
In short, if some on this board need to grow up, you certainly need to relax a little. Don't be so suspicious of people.
This again sounds like a weird or evasive thing to say, but I'm much less suspicious of people than social processes that operate through people. Its not about personal sniping. I should have made this clearer. The phenomenon I'm trying to describe is something ultimately bigger than people themselves, that they partake of, rather than something that they can be blamed for. That is why you have consolidated the point I was trying to make - you've engaged in a dialogue with me, criticised me in a sensible and level headed way which doesn't resort to personal sniping or name dropping, we've learnt something from each other, and we're both happy. So no, I haven't shot myself in the foot. You get me?
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Yep, points taken on board - I'm glad that you have explained yourself in order to clarify. And I agree with pretty much everything you say.
Wonderful
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And in particular, no Tom Paulin saying 'I heeeeyayted ut' in his languid yet enormously self-satisfied way. And, even more crucially, no Mark Lawson looking like an egg.
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and cheers to chiaroscuro (sp perhaps?) for bothering to engage a decent discussion
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