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Refused is making a new album 17 years after The Shape of Punk to Come

Refused is making a new album 17 years after The Shape of Punk to Come

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And the first track is amazing

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Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come is one of the most blistering, original, and important records in the history of hardcore music, sounding like a manifesto for the future of a stale genre upon its release in 1998. Except, well, Refused broke up almost immediately after it came out, meaning that we never got to see where the pioneering Swedish band would take the template it set out. The wait is over, though; following the odd reunion tour over the past few years, Refused is finally making a new album.

It’s called Freedom, and will be out June 30th on Epitaph. You can listen to the opening track "Elektra" below, and if you liked Refused’s blend of ferocious guitars and jazzy time signatures in the ‘90s, you’ll be into this too. It has everything that all the best tracks from The Shape of Punk to Come had: Dennis Lyxzén’s powerful vocals, David Sandström’s relentless drumming, and spiralling, head-spinning Helmet-meets-Nation-of-Ulysses riffs crashing into an accessible yet extreme collision of sound.

I’ll be honest, as someone who saw Refused in Japan a few years ago and was kind of blown away: I’m kind of blown away that they can actually write new tunes this great in 2015.

Here's the Freedom artwork:

refused freedom

And here's the tracklist:

  1. Elektra
  2. Old Friends / New War
  3. Dawkins Christ
  4. Françafrique
  5. Thought Is Blood
  6. War on the Palaces
  7. Destroy the Man
  8. 366
  9. Servants of Death
  10. Useless Europeans

Consider me cautiously optimistic for June 30th.