Swedish hardcore punk band Refused will call it a day after a final US tour in 2025.
Refused had three albums in their first innings:
This Just Might Be …the Truth (1994)
Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent (1996)
The Shape of Punk To Come (1998)
And two more in the 21st Century reunion:
Freedom (2015)
War Music (2019)
Refused drummer David Sandström muses: “We were supposed to do this in June. 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.
We played our first show in February 1992. 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 4 Gorilla Biscuits songs, a Shelter song, an AC\DC song and I think 3 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 US. 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 nineties 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. There’s a Neil Young song called “Buffalo Springfield Again” where he sings:
“I’d like to see those guys again and give it a shot
Maybe now we can show the world what we got
But I’d just like to play for the fun we had”
Refused 2025 Tour Dates:
03/21 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
03/23 – Toronto, ON @ HISTORY
03/25 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed
03/27 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
03/28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall
03/29 – Del Mar, CA @ The Sound
03/30 – Phoenix, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
04/01 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
04/02 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Union Event Center
04/04 – Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory
04/05 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
04/07 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
04/08 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
04/10 – Sacramento, CA @ Ace Of Spades
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