Refused criticise “nostalgia circuit” - “that’s not really part of our expression as a band”

In the new, July issue of DIY (out Wednesday 24th June), Refused separate themselves from a “nostalgia circuit”, that they in turn criticise.

“It’s a problem,” guitarist Kristofer Steen says over the phone from Seattle, where the band are a few dates into a US tour. “I feel really weird about being associated with something like that. That’s not really part of our expression as a band. We’re still searching and finding our way. Your fanbase tends to want you to sound exactly like you did last record. Be different, but in exactly the same way. You have to take risks. That’s part of the DNA of the band.”

There’s little point in skirting around the fact that ‘Freedom’ is going to make a lot of people angry. That Lyxzén has been more Mick Jagger than Ian MacKaye for years won’t matter. That anyone has the right not to be defined solely by statements made in their 20s won’t matter. This is punk rock and iconography is king. Refused’s sticky end has, for those who weren’t there to see the vitriol and anguish that fuelled it, become public property.

“I can totally understand the appeal of that narrative, that grand myth,” Steen says. “I understand that people want to print the legend. So much of punk, rock’n’roll and popular culture in general is based on fiction. Everyone knows that it’s a fiction. No band can live up to that myth-making. We’re a bunch of guys who love to make music. We’re not really concerned about the myth, even if we’ve benefited from that myth.

“We can’t worry about that kind of thing. We get thrown on by the fact that we have a passionate audience that expects a lot. That’s a privileged position to be in, to have people anxious about what you do. That’s our crowd, they are very opinionated and have very specific ideas about what we shouldn’t do. I think that’s cool, when people aren’t on board.”

Read the full Refused interview in the July issue of DIY, out Wednesday 24th June.