It’s 11:05 p.m. when the last chord of “Pump The Brakes” fades away in Munich’s Muffathalle, a wild, energetic closer, then the lights go out, which means the lights come back on and a colorful crowd of 1,200 people pushes out into the night. Punk is dead and now Refused are behind it too. Forever. First of all.
Refused are currently on a worldwide farewell tour. On Sunday the hardcore veterans played the last show they will officially play in Germany in Munich, and so they all came here to dance farewell again. The fiddly music nerd, the distinguished gallery owner, the dreadlocks hanger and the hardcore fem lesbian with the shaved head. Young next to old and sometimes very old. A kind of cross-generational family reunion, but the vibes are consistently good because everyone can agree on Refused.
The Swedes are still considered the beloved model students of the avant-garde hardcore movement, “New Noises” was more than just their biggest hit, it was also a fulfilled promise, with their third album “The Shape Of Punk To Come” they broke out of the tight corset that hardcore had imposed on them.
A genre bastard who set the scene on fire
Okay, to be fair, of course there was an opening up in the scene even before Refused, early post-hardcore representatives like Quicksand, At the Drive-In and Nation of Ulysses had been experimenting with forms of sounds and song structures that were foreign to the scene a few years earlier, but never before had this culminated in such a broad genre bastard as in 1998 in “The Shape”, which was at the same time with everyone Song claimed to be a political-revolutionary manifesto.
In 55 minutes and 9 seconds, Refused demonstrated how the deconstruction of energetic punk and intellectual hardcore can work, mixing their sound with spoken word, jazz, drum’n’bass, industrial, ambient, even orchestral elements. In its entirety, this album was nothing less than a Molotov cocktail that they threw at the scene and how highly explosive it still is was shown in Munich, at least in places.
But the band needed a little time to warm up. They start at 9.40 p.m. with “Poetry Written In Gasoline”, the audience is still holding back. Frontman Dennis Lyxzén doesn’t really manage to connect with the crowd, even if he really tries with all his physical effort. Only when the band plays “REV001” a good quarter of an hour later does the collective spark finally fly. The subsequent songs “Summerholiday vs. Punkroutine” and “Liberation Frequency” also maintain the tension, but then the connection breaks off again and the set drags along sluggishly.
Interestingly, it is the songs from their early work that repeatedly deliver a brutal punch, capture the audience for a brief moment and sometimes form the best moments of the evening, such as the outstanding “Circle Pit” from the “Rather Be Dead” EP (1996). This is how Refused play their way through their 34-year band career with some ups and too many downs.
Here and there there is enough for a flash in the pan, there is nothing more to be had
Meanwhile, in the audience, my friend Kevin also tries out a very practical deconstruction of punk when he tries in vain to get rid of his empty beer deposit cup and doesn’t ask the people around him if they have a euro, but rather if they want one. It doesn’t work. At some point it is pointed out to him that no one would take the deposit cups without a deposit stamp that he had been cheated out of at the bar.
But as we all know, capitalism is a bitch, as you can learn on stage at Refused, where Lyxzén is giving a political monologue about how capitalism is responsible for making people like Kevin feel like shit and that we should all pay more attention to our mental health. Platitudes that he is actually too clever for.
But maybe this is just another attempt to recapture the audience, you have to give credit to Lyxzén, he really gives his all on stage, the man is already in his mid-50s, but this is probably one of the problems. Especially compared to hardcore shows of the latest generation, the overall experience simply seems too old in terms of its performativity. No matter the effort, there are still sparks, of course, but the band no longer ignites a lasting firestorm. Here and there there is still enough for a flash in the pan.
It’s not just the band’s fault, the audience also remains apathetic for a long time. Hard to say, but Grandpa Punk is getting on in years. He doesn’t need a pacemaker yet, but here in Munich it’s clear that he needs to slow down a bit at times and take a deep breath.
The critic of capitalism as master capitalist
“We could be dangerous / art as a real threat,” Lyxzén once shouted out his program, but this is no longer a threat, it’s more of a self-assurance program to make it clear to yourself once again where you stand. Politically and culturally on the right side, where else? And so the last German Refused concert ends smugly after an hour and a half of playing time. This band didn’t spark a revolution, but many will have had a pretty good evening.
And a small consolation remains, because perhaps it’s not completely over with the band after all, because Lyxzén is not only a clever critic of capitalism, but an even cleverer capitalist. After enough tickets for the tour were sold, he announced that the band might still go on – just under a different name.
As the band leaves the stage you can see the big banner hanging behind them again. “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal” it says. It couldn’t be truer.