Show review: Refused at House of Blues – 7/20
Controversially reunited Swedish hardcore heroes Refused made their way to Boston last weekend, fresh off the festival circuit. OFF! opened.
I’ll just kick this off by admitting that I am no punk. I blast Black Flag or the Misfits at an irresponsible volume from time to time, but I’m surely no adherent to the moshpit-loving lifestyle or its various and sundry ideologies. Thus, I greeted news of the Refused reunion with excited anticipation rather than disappointment, anger and resentment. Between the band’s angrily anti-capitalism stance and strong-worded insistence that they would “never play together again,” their reformation for the express purpose of touring and playing massive festivals predictably pissed off a lot of their biggest fans. Indeed it was strange to hear frontman Dennis Lyxzén scream the words “I’ve got a bone to pick with capitalism / and a few to break” from the stage of the ultra-corporate House of Blues, but the energy and power of Friday’s show would indicate that Refused are not just doing this whole reunion thing for a paycheck.
Much of opener OFF!’s set was frustratingly lost to me due to unfortunate parking circumstances. Never ever attempt to park near Fenway during a Red Sox game if you don’t want to hate life. What I did catch, though, was about what you would expect from the Keith Morris fronted hardcore supergroup. And by that I mean they ferociously tore through five songs in as many minutes with the volume cranked and Morris spitting venom from the mic. Indicators of a killer performance; signals that I should’ve taken the train and actually seen the whole thing.
A palpable anticipation filled the air as Refused loomed in the near future. The band made us wait, and contributed to the atmosphere by drawing a giant curtain across the stage. The band’s name eventually appeared in projection across it, and an instrumental drone began to emanate from the back of the stage. It was a lot of pomp and circumstance for a punk show, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t effective in getting the already excited crowd even more pumped up. In a dramatic flash the curtain dropped and the band immediately ripped into the bone-crushing opening riff of “Worms of the Senses / Faculties of the Skull.” A pit opened in the center of the crowd as other fans clamored to hang over the front rail and scream along to every word. Witnessing the overwhelming enthusiasm with which the band was received pretty well silenced the echoing voices of all those reunion naysayers.
From the opening song, Refused never let up. Lyxzén spent the majority of the set sprinting across the stage, swinging his mic and jumping on and off the monitor speakers with a seemingly boundless energy. His voice also hasn’t aged a day since the band’s acrimonious 1998 split. That ragged, piercing scream is as arresting as ever. The other members (guitarists Jon Brännström and Kristofer Steen, bassist Magnus Flagge and drummer David Sandström) show no signs of rust either. The pounding rhythm section and dueling guitars delivering slashing metallic riffs brought the band’s heavy prog-punk sound to life in an utterly visceral way. The increased song lengths and instrumental complexity that characterized much of the set weren’t typical of hardcore, but Refused never were a typical hardcore band. They were stretching beyond the genre and incorporating influences as disparate as jazz and heavy metal by the end of their career, and even today their songs sound fresh and unique. I’m not enough of a punk historian to trace the influence of their landmark final LP The Shape of Punk to Come, but I think it’s safe to say that title isn’t quite as presumptive today as it might have seemed fourteen years ago.
Unsurprisingly, cuts from Shape made up the majority of the setlist. The band is fully aware of the worshiped status of their magnum opus, and they give the people what they want. The aforementioned “Worms of the Senses” is the perfect opener to both album and set; a brutalizing seven minute trek that kicks you in the head with its explosive opening only to wind down and wind right back up to kick you again. The quiet-loud-quiet dynamic attacks of “Liberation Frequency” were similarly dazing. Pre-Shape material only made up about a third of the evening, but the choices were good ones. A one-two punch of “Rather Be Dead” and “Coup d’état” was especially intense. Perhaps the best song of the night, though, was the anthemic “New Noise.” The fan-favorite track found the crowd screaming even louder than Lyxzén, especially on the emphatic “WOO”s between verses.
Pessimists will go on calling this reunion tour a cash grab that opposes the very foundation of the band, but financially motivated or not, no one’s going to claim that Refused aren’t giving it their all after seeing one of these shows. Leaving the bitterness of their past behind, the band seems to legitimately enjoy performing their songs and spreading their message to such large crowds. The House of Blues is no stadium gig, but it’s the Superbowl in comparison to the basements and hole in the wall clubs the band toured in the nineties. To the chagrin of some members of the crowd, Lyxzén even took to his soapbox to emphasize the continuing importance of the band’s leftist and individualist ideals today. Call it self-righteous, but the man clearly believes every word he screams. An inspired monologue three-fourths of the way through an encore closing “Tannhäuser / Derivè” essentially amounted to “fuck authority, do what you please,” and gave way to the song’s “BOREDOM WON’T GET ME TONIGHT” mantra. Boredom got none of us this night.
