Legendary Swedish hardcore band Refused will embark on a North American farewell tour next spring with support from Quicksand, beginning March 21 in Brooklyn, N.Y. The group are also releasing a 25th anniversary edition of their classic debut, The Shape of Punk To Come, featuring remixes and covers from the likes of Quicksand, Zulu, Gel, IDLES and Touche Amore.
“We were supposed to do this in June,” drummer David Sandström says. “Roll out our modest farewell run, starting with the Rosendal Garden Party in Stockholm and then doing a few shows here and there 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 secret show at Kulturhuset Femman in Uppsala. There were no pictures taken and it wasn’t filmed 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.”
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Now recovered, Lyxzen is known for his unhinged stage presence and ferocious scream — two qualities which helped Refused become one of the most influential hardcore bands of all time. The group split following The Shape of Punk to Come but reunited in 2012 and have been active in the studio and on the road ever since.
“We played our first show in February 1992,” Sandström says. “That same week George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin held a press conference at Camp David to declare that the Cold War was over. That’s how long ago it was. It was so long ago that I can’t quite remember who we were that wintry Saturday when we piled into a car and drove up to Luleå to play four Gorilla Biscuits songs, a Shelter song, an ACDC song and I think three original compositions to a crowd of 50-60 blind drunk northerners. I had just turned 17, had never travelled outside of Sweden and by the time the band broke up in 1998 we had played over 500 shows all over Europe and the U.S. To say that the band changed our lives would be a gross understatement, and to say that we got to know each other in those seven years is as well. A band that tours becomes like a family, especially when you do it in a van, with maps, scrambling to find a squat in Halberstadt where you were supposed to have started playing an hour ago. And family relations can be difficult. So it was with us.
“That was partly why we wanted to give it another shot in 2012. We had made a decent splash in the ’90s and the breakup had been very sudden and chaotic. There were feelings and they were not aired out and the whole thing had been such a shitshow that it was almost inevitable that we’d get back on the horse at some point. We wanted a do-over, to see what was still there, if anything, and what could be made of it. 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. [Guitarist] Kristofer [Steen] 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 ’90s 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.
Concluding, Sandström reports, “we’re looking at what else we can do with the rest of [2025]. 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.”
As for the anniversary edition of Shape of Punk, Refused says in a collective statement, “whatever the record means to everyone else, it represents a remarkable time in our lives when we were young and devil-may-care. We were taking risks, wanting to prove our mettle, and more than anything else we want to celebrate that: the madness, the wild combinations, the pure creativity of it all. So we asked a bunch of artists we love and respect to actually take liberties with the songs and either rearrange or deconstruct the material completely, to take the engine apart essentially and not be precious about it. And they weren’t, and to us this is the only tribute to our record that matters: heroes of ours, young guns as well as old friends and peers complimenting our music by uncovering new possibilities and new meaning within it. These bands are all caviar for the general and we are honored they took time to be a part of this. Thank you all.”
Here are Refused’s 2025 tour dates:
March 21 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
March 23 – Toronto, ON – HISTORY
March 25 – Chicago, IL – Salt Shed
March 27 – San Francisco, CA – The Warfield
March 28 – Los Angeles, CA – Shrine Expo Hall
March 29 – Del Mar, CA – The Sound
March 30 – Phoenix, AZ – Marquee Theatre
April 1 – Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre
April 2 – Salt Lake City, UT – Union Event Center
April 4 – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory
April 5 – Seattle, WA – The Showbox
April 7 – Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
April 8 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
April 10 – Sacramento, CA – Ace Of Spades
The Shape of Punk To Come Obliterated track list:
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
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