Refused look anything but fucking dead in Vancouver

Drained and sweat-soaked, Dennis Lyxzén could have been forgiven for refusing to get up off the stage. And, for a while, it looked like he was going to do just that.

No one in the Vogue would have blamed him. Proving that some things are more than worth the wait, the live-wire frontman for Sweden’s reunited Refused had just spent the past hour making up for lost time. It took a 14-year hiatus for one of the most groundbreaking acts in hardcore to return, and the five-piece did anything but disappoint.

Unrelenting and flat-out fucking incendiary will do as starting descriptors for what 900 or so delirious fans witnessed. And, unbelievably, there were moments every bit as memorable as “New Noise”, the smart-bomb anti-hit which temporarily left Lyxzén in a crumpled heap at centre stage one song into the encore. Let’s back up a bit though.

As hot tickets go, this was one of the biggest ones of the summer. Refused were playing the second half of a two-night stand at the Vogue, the Sunday show added after Monday sold out in about 17 seconds. If summer was starting to feel like it was over outside, that changed the second you stepped into the theatre. You like sweltering, not to mention stinking mightily of spilled Pabst Blue Ribbon and eye-watering B.O.? Well, then, the Vogue was the place to be.

There was also the smell of anticipation. The audience—many whose members were just out of diapers when Refused pulled the plug back in 1998—was jacked to the point where it wasn’t a question of if the room was going to go off, but when.

Predictably, that happened one song into the night. A giant floor-to-ceiling curtain—emblazoned with "Refused"—fell to the stage to reveal Lyxzén and his bandmates—drummer David Sandström, guitarists Jon Brännström and Kristofer Steen, and bassist Magnus Flagge. The band ripped right into the dissonant-jazz-blitzed “Worms of the Senses/Faculties of the Skull”, at which point it was like watching a giant lit torch land on a lake of napalm.

Over the next hour, which drew heavily from 1998’s landmark album The Shape of Punk to Come, Refused showed it’s far from fucking dead, and not just during the road-rage explosiveness of “Refused Are Fucking Dead”. When he wasn’t leaping six feet into the air off guitar amps, or delivering impassioned sermons on the evils of capitalism and the importance of free speech, Lyxzén was a dancing madman who has moves not only like Jagger, but also like Roger Daltrey, Iggy Pop, and every other iconic frontman who's ever mattered. Sandström and Brännström were only marginally less captivating, both spending good chunks of the set howling along to songs and psychotically punching the air during the breakdowns where their services weren’t required.

In the mosh pit, where real estate was a scarce commodity, the crowd screamed along to “Liberation Frequency”, which winningly mixed abrasive-folk with face-melting hardcore. When it completely lost its shit during “Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine”, Lyxzén followed suit to the point where he eventually ended up standing in the pit on the hands of the outstretched faithful.

Hard as all this was to top, Refused did just that with a raging “New Noise”, which even got the deadbeats in the cheap seats dancing. The song exploded at the end with Lyxzén screaming the lyrics “The new beat!/The new beat!” over and over again, the veins in his neck bulging, until he fell over on his back and just lay there. But because real soldiers—even those who’ve been missing in action for a decade and a half—always get on their feet, the frontman did just that.

Refused concluded things on a daring note, rolling out “Tannhäuser/Derive”, a monolithic slowjam that was part lumbering postrocker and part atmospheric experiment. Stripped naked to the waist, rivers of sweat running off him, Lyxzén interrupted the song mid-stream to make an impassioned speech about the importance of art, staying curious about life, and following one’s dreams. The band then blazed into the song’s outro, the singer screaming “Boredom won’t get me tonight.” Lyxzén was not only still standing, but dancing like he’d just arrived on the Vogue’s stage. Epic. Truly goddamn epic.

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