This year marks the tenth anniversary of the release of ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ album from Refused. Refused was a Swedish Hardcore Punk band and active between the years of 1991 and 1998. ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ was the last album that the band would ever release, an album that marked a dramatic change from their earlier work and is considered by most to be the best album that the band ever released. Ten years on it is still an album which is held in extremely high regard, and several nods towards this album have been made from UK based bands in recent years. Adequate Seven had a track entitled ‘The Shape of Funk to Come’ on their ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ album, and Sonic Boom Six have a track called ‘The Rape of Punk to Come’ on their ‘Sounds To Consume’ EP. It is clear that although Refused as a band are long since dead, their impact upon modern Punk music is still being felt today and this is due to the exceptional quality which their music possessed. The music of Refused possessed a great energy, and they embodied the true essence of Punk with their vigorous aggression and ‘Screw You’ mentality.
With a heavily Marxist ideology and inspiration drawn largely from the hardcore bands ‘Nation of Ulysees’ and ‘Born Against’, Refused blast their way through ‘The Shape Of Punk to Come’ album with a great deal of intensity and a huge level of energy. The band begin their album with the furious ‘Worms of the Senses / Faculties of the Skull’, end it with the awesome ‘The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax’, and never once do they show any signs of weakness whatsoever. In my opinion ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ was the finest hour of music that Refused ever did record as a band, and for this reason it is and perhaps always will be my favourite hardcore punk album of all time.
As the band repeat the line of ‘We want the airwaves back’ throughout the track ‘Liberation Frequency’, there is something greatly hard hitting about this. It is when they slam into a hardcore assault of shouted vocal fury however that this track truly comes alive. It is one of my favourite tracks from this album, but then again there is not one single track here that I do not hold in extremely high regard. Such aggression is expressed on this album and yet the whole time the lyrical content is excellent. The music is intelligent and insightful, heavy and greatly effective; Refused were an excellent band and ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ provides all the evidence you should require to hear just how brilliant a band Refused truly was.
‘Summerholidays Vs. Punkroutine’ is another of the finest moments that this album has to offer. There is near on a full hour of exceptional music here (55 minutes and 11 seconds to be precise), but there are a few tracks that I really see as key to ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ album as a whole. Due to some exceptional drum work, a powerful vocal style, and hugely effective use of guitars; this is one of those tracks that I can’t help but see as essential to this album and its overall excellence. The track includes the interesting vocal line of ‘Rather be forgotten than remembered for giving in’, a line I can fully relate to and appreciate. The lyrics are always interesting and never do they disappoint, always they are intelligently thought out with each line carefully woven to the next.
Opening vocally with the shouted line of ‘Can I Scream?! Yeah!’, ‘New Noise’ is perhaps the most memorable of all tracks from this album. The opening guitar riff has to be one of my favourites of all time, one that every time I hear I just want to pick up a guitar and tear it out myself. The memorable vocal line doesn’t actually kick in until over a minute into the track, and yet everything that comes before it is equally memorable if not more so. The guitar riff is repeated relentlessly throughout the track and never does it becomes tiresome. I could listen to that riff all day, I truly could; it genuinely is that excellent. Shouting ‘We dance to all the wrong songs, We enjoy all the wrong moves’ multiple times over, the track comes to its end with the repeated line of ‘The new beat!’ over and over before simply settling with a ‘Thank you’ for the final few seconds of the track. Everything about this one comes together perfectly, it is an absolutely excellent offering of hardcore punk and I fail to see how anyone could not love this.
Title track ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ is another track from the band blessed with an absolutely excellent guitar riff. The guitar riff here is in fact more impressive than that of ‘New Noise’, this I feel says a lot about the quality and consistency of this album. Every time I listen to this I picture the band tearing their way through the track, bouncing around brutally as they dazzle everyone with their fine display of hardcore punk perfection. The vocal line of ‘We’re all dressed up, we’ve got somewhere to go’ lives long in the memory, it is meticulously exploded out from the mouth of Dennis Lyxzén and I have no cause for complaint whatsoever.
The album comes to a close with the controversially titled ‘The Apollo Programme Was A Hoax’, a four minute swan song which begins with the sound of a double bass and as it progresses turns out to be the only slow paced track present on this album. For this final track of their last ever album, Refused saw it fit to bow out with a track memorable for it’s difference from the rest of the album it belongs to. The lyrical focus here is on the overthrow of the ruling power, a revolution involving ‘petrol bombs & barricades’ in the ultimate hope that ‘sabotage will set us free’. It’s an interesting track that does I feel benefit from it’s slow pace, the lyrical content is hard hitting and this final track is one that I do in fact enjoy hugely so. The band vocally state here that ‘The destruction of everything is the beginning of something new’, it’s an interesting line from Refused and as always is one that truly does make you think. The lyrical content of this album is absolutely brilliant, never are the band anything short of sensational in the lyrics department. Every single track from Refused makes you think with ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’, not one is in the slightest bit disappointing and every track in fact is intelligently crafted and created.
To quote the title of a track from this release ‘Refused Are *****in Dead’, the bands music does however live on in the form of the albums that Refused released during their seven year reign. Refused were an absolutely excellent hardcore punk band, and this last album of theirs in my opinion is by far their finest offering. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting down and listening to ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’, not one track disappoints and every one of the twelve tracks here present is in fact entirely excellent. Never have I come across a finer hour of music than this, it’s ten years since the album was released but it’s significance is still massive; a definitive album in the history of hardcore punk. ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ is vital listening, this is without doubt one of my favourite albums of all time and to say that this is the finest hardcore punk album ever released really goes without saying. Its great musical intelligence and expansive lyrical depth make ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ a truly enlightening album from a once great, now gone hardcore punk band.
Label: Burning Heart
Release Date: 27th October 1998
Rating:
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
