Refused Forming New Band With Same Members After Last Shows

After their final shows as a unit in December. the four members of Refused will all remain together in a brand new band. Drummer David Sandström broke the news on Instagram while announcing details of their last gigs in their native Sweden before the end of the year.

“We ([guitarist] Mattias [Bärjed], [bassist] Magnus [Flagge], [vocalist] Dennis [Lyxzen] and me) want to explore that — a band with no baggage, no fans to please, limited only by our wildest musical hopes and dreams,” he said without elaborating on the project’s name or specific timeline. “We’re very excited about getting around to taming this new wild beast.”

More from Spin:

• Refused Salute New York Hardcore Heroes During Return To Stage
• Refused Bowing Out With Farewell Tour
• Refused’s Dennis Lyxzen Recovering After Heart Attack

Addressing why they couldn’t just carry on as Refused, Sandström admitted, “Refused was never good for mine and Dennis’ relationship. We both have our own idea of what the band should be and how we should behave and never the twain shall meet. And we’d rather be friends than play in a popular band.”

As they near the conclusion of their farewell tour, which resumes Oct. 1 in Glasgow, Refused have also set the lineups for the last eight gigs in Sweden, which will boast some of their oldest friends from the global hardcore scene as openers. Among them are Harrowed, Division of Laura Lee, Millencolin, Abhinanda, Final Exit, Nix and Dream Warriors.

“We’re bringing Youth Code over from L.A. to join us, a band we love both artistically and socially,” Sandström said. “Whenever i want listen to some really intense, violent new hardcore I always end up listening to Youth Code instead, and I can’t think of a band that better embodies the maelstrom of hatred and insanity that is presently consuming the U.S.”

He continued, “you have a pretty glorious marriage of old and new, of underground and established, of traditionalists and risk-takers, and nothing could sum up our band more than this amazing catalog of bands. This is going to be an absolute blast of a finale.”

Refused formed in 1991 and split following their landmark 1998 album The Shape of Punk to Come, but they reunited in 2012 and have been active in the studio and on the road ever since. Lyxzen suffered a heart attack in June 2024 but recovered sufficiently for Refused to begin touring again earlier this year.

“A few people have insinuated that like some other bands who, in the fashion of the great Larry David, quit with bells, whistles (and blood raining from a lacerating sky) only to return within a few years as if nothing had happened, Refused would do the same. Well, we won’t, and I feel the need to elucidate,” Sandström said. “We only broke up once and it was involuntary. Most of you might not remember but at the end of our reunion year [in] 2012, we kept things ambiguous in our final statement (‘The hatchet is buried … we’re going home’) for plausible deniability, because we weren’t sure our attempt at a permanent reunion would fly. It did, but only so far.”

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