tisdag 25 Jul 2006, 13:38

Refused-Refused Are Fucking Dead (Epitaph/Burning Heart)

The late 90s was kind of a renaissance period for punk, to me at least, and a time when I became heavily interested in the genre. A lot of bands (NOFX, Millencolin, etc.) were putting out their best material. Naturally, when I first heard the seminal Refused album The Shape Of Punk To Come, I shat all over myself. This was some of the most powerful, groundbreaking music I'd ever heard. The 'Refused Are Fucking Dead' DVD allowed me to rekindle my flame with the band, offering an over-dramatized account of the band's final tour and an insightful view in to how the individual band members were truly feeling leading up to the band's demise. Interviews with members revealing general feelings of disenchantment and disillusion are interwoven with live performances and sepia footage of the band in more lightheartened moments, creating an emotionally conflicting image of the band's downward spiral, eventually culminating in a final performance that was anti-climactic yet oddly fitting when the police shut them down halfway through their first song. Granted, if you're a gigantic Refused fan, you probably don't want to watch an hour of the band bitching about how shitty it is and eventually have them almost gratefully walk away from their final show at the hands of the police, but I'd recommend this DVD anyway because it offers an in-depth look at the implosion of a hugely successful band, as well as a reminder of why the Refused remain one of the most revolutionary acts in recent memory (and a million times better than the ridiculously shitty International Noise Conspiracy).