Refused Announce Their Final Festival Show In Sweden
The first time that Refused broke up, they didn’t get a storybook ending. The influential Swedish hardcore band had just released their 1998 landmark The Shape Of Punk To Come, and things within the band were tense and miserable. Partway through their US tour behind the album, the band played a house show in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and then broke up immediately after the show was shut down by police. Refused reunited in 2012, and they made two more albums. Now, it appears that Refused are winding down again, but their ending will probably be much less choatic.
This morning, Refused announced a show at the Rosendal Garden Party festival in Stockholm. That festival goes down 6/14-16. The Refused performance will happen on the festival’s opening date, which will also feature M.I.A. and Turnstile. The rest of the fest also feature artists like Massive Attack, the Caridgans, Grace Jones, Raye, the Heavy, and Saint Levant. This will be Refused’s first show in four years; their 2020 US tour ended just a few days before the pandemic arrived. According to a press release, “Rosendal is their only gig and their last festival gig in Sweden. Ever.”
Thus far, we don’t know anything else about Refused potentially breaking up. The band’s most recent record, the Malignant Fire EP, came out in fall 2020, and all the members of the band recently joined the group of artists calling for Israel’s exclusion from the Eurovision Song Contest, which happens this spring in Sweden. Refused have made no further announcements about a farewell tour, but that press-release quote seems pretty definitive.
