When punk band Refused first got back together, no one could have expected the reunion would last. Other than the fact that after their demise they made a documentary on the turmoil that made them break up with the appropriate name of Refused Are Fucking Dead, the band’s whole belief was strongly anti-capitalism – so the whole idea of getting back for money didn’t seem to apply the way it does for the rest of reunited groups (At The Drive In, I’m looking at you).

We’ve known for sometime that this year would be it, to the point where we thought we already knew when the last show was. Now on their Facebook page, Refused have truly announced when they will go in a heartfelt goodbye letter. They’ll be doing a show with their friends, Two White Horses and Råd Kjetil Senza Testa, in their hometown of Umeå on December 15.

You can read the tear jerking letter here by clicking “Read more”. Maybe you won’t get emotional, but The Shape Of Punk To Come carved my taste in music and set it in stone. To watch them return in my life and then walk away, and to think they sincerely mean what they say… well, UTG wishes them the best. We’ll miss you, Refused; at the very least, you gave a generation of musicians the new beat.

“GOIN’ HOME

So there were those years right after school, when you were 15 and pissed off and everyone thought you were a loser and you ran around with the other weirdos, generating weirdness and little else. And there were those years when what set you apart from the others become a fixation and a lifestyle and you had a band and people talked about what you did but you were so used to being weird you just lumped them in with the rest of the slanderers. Then there were those years when the ideas you’d clung to through late adolescence were beginning to ring hollow and you got more and more confused and destructive and the band broke up and you had rent to pay. That was among the tougher years. And then slowly, over a span of time, you began to sort yourself out and your friends started making sensible decisions in their lives and it suddenly began to seem like most of you were gonna be ok. And then there was the year when you stopped being a petulent kid and you got your favorite musicians together in a room again and decided that you were gonna accept the love of thousands of listeners, accept the success that was waiting there to be had and just in general enjoy being appreciated for the exact same qualities that made you a freak to your contemporaries in your teens. This was one of the better years. And now it is coming to a close. It’s been kind to us. And that old punkrock golem “The shape of punk to come” has done good. The hatchet is buried, 1998 is not such a terrible memory for us anymore. We’re going home. And we’re doing it in style. With old friends and new acquaintances in tow we’re gonna take over our old hometown Umeå for one more night, just because we can. On the 15th of december at the Exel arena we’ll be sharing the stage with these magnificent comrades: Randy (http://www.randytheband.com/), a band of punkrock bandidos from the north who we befriended years before we even were Refused, Two White Horses, an excellent sister/brother-duo from Sävar, both of whom we’ve individually collaborated with in different musical projects through the years, and Råd Kjetil Senza Testa, a new and exciting musical collective consisting of old Umeå pop and hardcore scenesters, among them the guy who produced the very first version of New noise for a local hardcore compilation in early 1997. We unconditionally endorse these bands.

Great music, good crude fun, what more do you need? It’s going to be one of those nights.
www.tickster.com/sv/events/j6z64866u2u6y9y

Thank you for populating the pit in 2012.

Over and out.”

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Dan Bogosian

I finished school with a music theory degree. Before I finished school, I was a janitor. You really should apologize to all the janitors you've ever had. You hurt them. Seriously. You did.

But, now that we've cleared that up and you called your high school janitor, know that I quit being a janitor to pursue writing about music. So here I am, and here you are, and hey how are you?

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