The timeline of Refused’s initial split is an absolute mess.
Just weeks before the release of The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts, the band imploded during a disastrous tour of the United States.
After a handful of sparsely-attended shows, the quartet officially broke up on September 26, 1998, but played their final show on October 5 at a basement venue in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The local police department ended the gig after just a few songs, further compounding the sense of futility felt throughout the Umeå four-piece.
Refused in 2025 (Image credit: Press)
Shortly after their demise, the band – vocalist Dennis Lyxzén, guitarists Kristofer Steen and Jon Brännström, and drummer David Sandström – issued a statement and manifesto via the Burning Heart Records website.
“We will continue to, at every attempt, overthrow the class system, burn museums and to strangle the great lie that we call culture… we will continue to demand revolution here and now, and not in some vague future that all reactionary leftist fundamentalists and reformists are talking about. We want every day and every action to be a manifestation of love, joy, confusion and revolt.
“This is the last that we have to say about it, WE WILL NOT GIVE INTERVIEWS TO STUPID REPORTERS who still haven’t [sic] got anything of what we are all about, we will never play together again and we will never try to glorify or celebrate what was. All that we have to say has been said here or in our music/manifestos/lyrics and if that is not enough you are not likely to get it anyway. WE THEREFORE DEMAND THAT EVERY NEWSPAPER BURN ALL THEIR PHOTOS OF REFUSED so that we will no longer be tortured with memories of a time gone by and the mythmaking [sic] that single-minded and incompetent journalism offers us. Instead we need to look forward. We got everything to win and nothing but our boredom to lose.”
The Shape of Punk to Come was destined to become one of the most influential and ambitious records in post-hardcore. Almost three decades later, it still sounds truly revolutionary.
While the title of their third album was a nod to Ornette Coleman’s similarly groundbreaking 1959 release The Shape of Jazz to Come, Refused drew a line under a stagnating post-hardcore scene. Recorded at Umeå’s Tonteknik Bomba Je Studios with producers Eskil Lövström, Andreas Nilsson and Pelle Henricsson, they created an avant-garde masterpiece in 12 movements, bringing in jazz and electronic interludes, cellos and violins to soundtrack frontman Lyxzén’s anti-capitalist manifesto.
In the years leading up to their 2012 reunion, the band’s profile grew and influenced a new generation of bands and musicians, while spin-off projects like The (International) Noise Conspiracy and TEXT toiled away in the shadow of their former band’s legacy.
The cover of Refused’s 1998 album, The Shape of Punk to Come (Image credit: Epitaph)
Dennis Lyxzén recognises the far-reaching influence of The Shape of Punk to Come but notes that the scene it was attempting to rejuvenate did not react kindly to the release.
“People were kind of pissed off when that record came out,” Lyxzén told Canadian magazine Exclaim!. “They were like, ‘You heathens. If this is the shape of punk to come then I’m quitting punk.’ We got a lot of that. When Ornette Coleman’s record came out people thought he was an idiot and they wanted to kill him so it’s kind of fitting in a way.”
People were kind of pissed off when that record came out.
Dennis Lyxzén on The Shape of Punk to Come
Of the entire tracklist, two songs in particular kept the album alive throughout their 14-year hiatus. One was Liberation Frequency; the other was New Noise, whose compelling video was aired regularly on alternative music television channels, while the song was included on the soundtrack for the video game Tony Hawk’s Underground.
“To a lot of people, we’re just a rock band,” Lyxzén told Revolver. “So obviously, there’s gonna be a lot of people who don’t understand where we’re coming from or don’t understand our political background or our musical background, even. That’s not to put anyone down, but if you discovered New Noise 10 years ago and thought, ‘This is a killer song. I like this band’, but you have no concept of who we are, you might be offended by the fact that we made a theme record saying capitalism is bad.
“But those are the people we’ve always been, and those are the ideas we’ve always had,” he added. “I don’t think that’s as clear-cut to people now as it was in the ’90s, because in the ’90s we were part of something very specific.”
Crazy Town loved New Noise so much they would massacre the song during their shows around the time Butterfly was a massive hit. The very idea that this band who’d become famous by sampling another band – and singing about “new art for real people” – left a bitter taste in Lyxzén’s mouth.
It’s horrible; they should be shot.
Dennis Lyxzén was not a fan of Crazy’s Town’s cover of New Noise
“It’s horrible; they should be shot,” Lyxzén told Exclaim! in 2000, whose writer Stuart Green noted the singer’s remark was uttered “with only a hint of irony”. “Seriously, I hate that band. Did you ever listen to them? I don’t like to talk shit about bands, there are more constructive ways to work, but sometimes you just have to say, ‘Stop… please stop this.’
“If someone listened to The Shape… and really understood what we were thinking about they wouldn’t be in Crazy Town and they wouldn’t think The Shape of Punk to Come was to add a DJ to a metal band,” he added. “If they really loved Refused, they missed everything that was important about that band.”
In recent years, the television and movie industries have cottoned on to the song’s volatile power.
It has been featured in the films Crank, Here Comes the Boom and Triangle of Sadness, as well as the TV shows Friday Night Lights and Criminal Minds.
Most recently, the song has become a theme of sorts for The Bear, a tense drama set in a busy Chicago restaurant. The show, which began in 2022, boasts an exemplary soundtrack, but it’s the 1998 hardcore classic New Noise which gives the series its most visceral pacing.
“I was watching the Emmys or whatever it was when they constantly played New Noise every time they won an award,” Lyxzén told the CBC podcast Q with Tom Power. “I’m like, this is trippy. Seeing Steve Martin on stage listening to New Noise? That’s wild.”
(LouderSound)
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