Refused are fucking done — or they’re about to be fucking done, anyway. The adventurous Swedish punk band famously broke up in the middle of a 1998 North American tour, just after the release of their opus The Shape Of Punk To Come, before reuniting in 2012 and making two more albums. Earlier this year, they were supposed to headline Stockholm’s Rosendal Garden Party in what was billed as “their last festival gig in Sweden. Ever.” They didn’t make it to that show, as frontman Dennis Lyxzén suffered a heart attack just before the show. Now, Lyxzén is on his way to a full recovery, and Refused have announced a second breakup. This one is a lot more planned-out than their first.

Before they put the band to bed, Refused will tour North America one last time, with fellow reunited ’90s hardcore trailblazers Quicksand opening. They’re exploring what they’ll do after that tour, but they want to end everything in Sweden by the end of next year. Refused will also release a 25th-anniversary edition of The Shape Of Punk To Come, with unreleased demos and rare alternate versions, as well as a 12-song tribute album called The Shape Of Punk To Come Obliterated.

The tribute compilation will have different acts covering or remixing every song from The Shape Of Punk To Come. The list of contributors includes Quicksand, IDLES, Fucked Up. Touché Amoré, Gel, Zulu, Cold Cave, Brutus, and Snapcase. Here’s what Refused drummer David Sandström says about the band’s ending in a press release:

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”

And that was basically it. We gave it several shots between 2012 and 2024. We all have different takes on how it went and what the legacy of the reformed band will be, but personally I felt we couldn’t quite agree on what we were supposed to do musically, and we were still struggling with that when the pandemic hit. Kristofer felt that he’d done what he wanted to do and left the band in August of 2020, and although there was a delayed effect to the death blow, a death blow it was.

So in the beginning of this year, we started making plans to have one last big hurrah, to make the end of the band a fun, generous, indulgent affair. And that’s how it felt after the first show; it’s the best we’ve ever sounded, and we were really enjoying ourselves, tossing in old songs we haven’t played since the ’90s and even a Misfits cover. And then disaster struck. I visited Dennis in the hospital the day after he was admitted, and true to form, he was not happy about the hospital gown he was forced to wear. Hooked up to all these machines, unshaven with tousled hair, I swear the first thing he said was: (pointing to the gown) “I mean, this is not great.” I guess they don’t let you wear suits or Negative Approach t-shirts in the hospital.

So on to the good news: Dennis is doing great. He’s one of the healthiest dudes I know, he can’t sit still, exercises a lot, and it follows that his recuperation would be swift. He’s gotten excellent care, and his doctor has run all the physical tests on him, and they all indicate he’s making a full recovery. Needless to say, he’s itching to get back on tour to play shows, and he even suggested we should keep preliminary dates set up for the late fall and winter, but we decided to postpone those shows and instead start up in the spring. So yeah, that’s where we’re at. We’re coming to the US in March/April 2025, and we’re looking at what else we can do with the rest of the year; all we know is that we want to finish back home in Sweden at the end of the year. Let us know if there are songs you want us to play, and we’ll give them a shot. Hope to see you out there.

Below, check out the dates for Refused’s final North American tour and the tracklist for The Shape Of Punk To Come Obliterated.

TOUR DATES:
3/21 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
3/23 – Toronto, ON @ HISTORY *
3/25 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed *
3/27 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield *
3/28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall *
3/29 – Del Mar, CA @ The Sound *
3/30 – Phoenix, AZ @ Marquee Theatre *
4/01 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre *
4/02 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Union Event Center *
4/04 – Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory *
4/05 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox *
4/07 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre *
4/08 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall *
4/10 – Sacramento, CA @ Ace Of Spades *

* with Quicksand

TRACKLIST:
01 Gel – “Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull”
02 Quicksand – “The Liberation Frequency”
03 Brutus – “The Deadly Rhythm”
04 Snapcase – “Summer Holidays Vs. Punkroutine”
05 IDLES – “New Noise (Remix)”
06 Ho99o9 – “New Noise”
07 Fucked Up – “Refused Party Program”
08 Zulu – “Protest Song ’68”
09 Cold Cave – “Refused Are Fucking Dead”
10 IGORR – “The Shape Of Punk To Come”
11 Cult Of Luna – “Tannhäuser / Derive”
12 Touché Amoré – “The Apollo Programme Was A Hoax”

Hear clips from the tribute LP below.

25th anniversary vinyl re-issue of ‘The Shape Of Punk To Come’ out November 8th via @epitaphrecords.
Limited to just 2000 copies worldwide.

Pre-order now!https://t.co/DvPsw9eKmN pic.twitter.com/6aO2xit2Sm

— REFUSED (@Refused) September 11, 2024

The 25th-anniversary edition of The Shape Of Punk to Come and The Shape Of Punk To Come Obliterated are both out 11/8 on Epitaph.