The Shape of Punk is Bum: Refused’s Self-Flagellating Flop, and Three Albums That Actually Deserve Its Title
Lots of great albums celebrated a twentieth anniversary this year. Aquemini, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and This Is Hardcore, among others, have seen retrospective analysis of both a vacuumed dissection of their qualities, as well as how they’ve influenced their respective genres in the years since. Another album that’s certainly gotten some thoughtful admiration this year is Swedish post-hardcore band Refused’s breakthrough record. The Shape of Punk to Come (whose full title also includes A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts) has long been lauded as a landmark release in the then-burgeoning genre of post-hardcore. And although their post-reunion material has seen middling reception, TSOPTC has kept its reverence year after year. But as the album is an arm’s length from its drinking age, I can’t help but overanalyze its title just a tad; did Refused really shape the punk that came within the last twenty years?
On the album’s RateYourMusic page, user mookid notes in his review that “everything about this record except the music is incredibly ambitious, and that’s its biggest fault.” And upon listening to the record for probably the first time since I was 16, I was taken aback at how accurate this assessment was. Make no mistake, TSOPTC is not a bad album, and it’s certainly leagues beyond anything Refused has delivered before or since. But it certainly doesn’t live up to its title, or the hype that has followed the album in the years since it dropped. The easiest comparison to make to Refused is Fugazi; the grandfathers of post-hardcore are an open influence on the band, but they don’t need to verbally admit this for the audience to hear it. Songs like “Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine” and “Refused are Fucking Dead” have extreme echoes of Repeater or In On The Kill Taker. But every artist is influenced by another artist in some form or another; it’s how you mesh them that matters in the end.
Unfortunately for Refused, there’s not a whole lot of innovation into the Blueprint (get it?) that Mackaye and Picciotto had laid down nearly a decade before Refused picked it up. Sure, Dennis Lyxzén’s scream is scratchier and less throaty than Mackaye’s, but just about everything else in the meat of the album is lifted straight from the DC playbook. It’s also been argued that their entire aesthetic was lifted from another Dischord band, Nation of Ulysses (which there’s certainly an argument for.) And make no mistake — this would not be so bad if this were a scrappy post-hardcore band who were simply looking to play a sound they were passionate about and made a fairly good record in the process. Refused sincerely believed they were revolutionizing a genre with this record. The lyrics on “New Noise” (an anti-capitalist jam that has ironically become a mainstay at sporting events) summarize their goals best: “How can we expect anyone to listen / If we use the same old voice. / We need New Noise.”
The grandiose innovations that Refused believed would take punk in a new direction are at best good ideas that are out of place and at worst, ironically out-of-date. The techno interludes are the biggest offender of this. I recently relistened to Pretty Hate Machine, a record many claim sounds outdated. In NIN’s case, I have to disagree. Sure, the record is a product of its time, but it took the synthesizer-laden, artistic pop of bands like Depeche Mode and New Order, and gave it a darker, goth feel. In other words, it was actually innovative. And sure, it’s easy to give NIN more credit since they stuck around long enough to release a massive discography and influence waves of industrial and electronic artists instead of break up before a proper follow-up like Refused. But we can at least give Pretty Hate Machine credit for not being up its own ass (we can save that for later NIN.)
Other innovations Refused get credit for had been done before, and far better. The jazzy but aggressive song structures of songs like “The Deadly Rhythm” were honed years earlier by math rock progenitors like Shellac, Drive Like Jehu and Slint. Many of the softer moments of classical or folk such as “Tannhäuser / Derivè”) is weak Zen Arcade worship. And the thrashier elements just reflect what bands like what Rage Against the Machine or even the better nu metal acts had done years beforehand. It can’t be stated enough that none of these detours from punk or post-hardcore are necessarily bad (even though the straight-forward material just simply plays to the band’s strengths more.) They show Refused did have an artistic vision for themselves as a band and on this record in specific. The issue, at the end of the day, is the album’s self-importance. Even beyond the title and the lyrics, there’s a pompousness, a grandiosity to the production and structure of the record that just isn’t deserved. And for a record that flagellates itself for being innovate and important, it’s incredibly dated.
Ironically, what was supposedly “to come” was left behind in the greater scheme of things. That’s not to imply TSOPTC did nothing to the punk landscape: in fact, it inspired arguably the greatest post-hardcore record of all time, Relationship of Command. However, At The Drive-In were experimenting with uncharted audio dynamics, keyboard/synthesizer bits, jangly guitars and tortured screams since their inception. Refused were simply the catalyst that brought ADTI to the next level. Refused can also be heard in various doses in bands like The Blood Brothers, Every Time I Die, Propagandhi and Vein (as well as a laundry list of horrendous Warped Tour bands who claim their influence.) But I’d like to focus on three punk albums who also turn twenty years old this year, and how all three have shaped the last two decades of the genre far more than Refused ever did.
One thing Refused gets credited for is the introduction of more raw, passionate vocals rather than tough guy gruff. Sure, primitive emocore bands like Rites of Spring and Indian Summer experimented with this, but Lyxzén’s vocals took it to a new level, combining his unhinged shouting with more subdued and articulate croons in the crescendos to build up to that. But bubbling under the surface in New York City was a band who would go on to define a truly “revolutionary” development in punk.
That band was Saetia, and although they would be broken up in the following year, their self-titled album (which would be more widely known as part of a discography compilation a few years later) would be a defining release in the fledgling genre of screamo. Combining the vulnerability of emo with the aggression and speed of hardcore punk and powerviolence, Saetia is a demanding, exhaustive and emotionally draining record. The shabby recording quality and sometimes overbearing mixing only adds to its feelings of pure anguish and mental collapse. Its aesthetic is the complete opposite of Refused. It’s not hi-fi with eloquent instrumental passages and well-synced up media samples; it sounds muddy and gets straight to the point. You’re not getting lectured for nearly an hour; most of Saetia’s vocal performances are unintelligible save for a few scream-a-long moments, and is more about the feeling than the meaning (and is half the length.)
Unsurprisingly, Saetia would influence a legion of groups that would gain (relatively) more popularity. City of Caterpillar took screamo to a winding, post-rock influenced field with long instrumental passages and extreme crescendos. pageninetynine upped the violence and made music that made you feel like you were being ripped in half. Envy showed you could keep the intensity cranked all the way up while still incorporating melody to turn your mental torment into earworms. Screamo has only evolved since then, with bands like La Dispute and Touché Amore waving the flag to this day, keeping the raw passion while upping production qualities and making lyrics legible and even more crushing, making “true” screamo appealing to a whole new audience and generation.
One of the most revered golden age screamo bands was the Massachusetts-based Orchid, with Chaos is Me being their undisputed classic. And the first time I heard it, it reminded me at times of another band I was familiar with. I was unsurprised to find that band’s guitarist had produced CIM. If you couldn’t figure it out from those two, I’m talking about Converge. Their incredibly overlooked third album When Forever Comes Crashing is also twenty this year, and deserves more recognition than it typically gets. The album unfortunately precedes the band’s undisputed classic Jane Doe, which soaks up quite a bit of its attention. But When Forever Comes Crashing is a great album that helped establish what would become of metalcore, a genre that has all but swallowed up traditional hardcore punk these days.
When Converge began, metal-infused hardcore was already picking up steam with bands like Earth Crisis and Integrity playing music heavily influenced by New York Hardcore or crossover acts like Cro-Mags, Pantera and even Slayer. And Converge’s first two records were largely similar in sound. But When Forever Comes Crashing proved Converge were here to stay (and little would anyone know that they would get even better for the next twenty years straight.) This album is total chaos, but unlike screamo, the chaos here is controlled in a way. The guitars are shreddy and play in strange time signatures, but they have a texture to them that stand out even beyond the shoddy production of this record (which luckily has been remastered since.) Not to mention vocalist Jacob Bannon sounds as unhinged as he ever has, although he still implements clean vocals on the occasional softer track. The songs are also far more than just hitting the audience like a brick wall; the crescendo of Refused’s “Tannhäuser / Derivè” is nothing compared to “The Lowest Common Denominator.”
Converge didn’t invent metalcore, but they’ve certainly become pioneers of it, as well as being an early adopter of the mathcore subgenre. Bands like Botch, Coalesce and The Dillinger Escape Plan owe them a lot in giving metalcore a way out of its early 90s iteration that, unsurprisingly, is extremely dated. Like screamo, metalcore had a period of watering down in the mid-2000s but has since seen a resurgence with acts like Every Time I Die, Code Orange and Vein breathing new life and even Grammy nominations into it.
But music that makes you feel like the world is crashing down around you as you go into cardiac arrest isn’t the only thing punk is good for. As a matter of fact, simple sing-a-long melody was a defining trait in various subgenres of punk both hardcore and not. And with the exception of the more straightforward tracks, TSOPTC is seriously lacking in hooks. Maybe they should have borrowed one of the thousand present on Dillinger Four’s Midwestern Songs of the Americas.
If it weren’t for those pesky Replacements and Husker Du albums, the Dillinger Four discography would easily be the most significant punk rock to come from the Midwest, let alone Minnesota. The band had put out a few EPs and splits in the 90s, but their debut record is their true opus. Legend has it that when the band sent the completed album into Hopeless Records, the label replied saying the demos sounded great and asked when they were going to record. Like you’d expect from that comment, the album’s recording is clearly hot, and a stark contrast to the pop punk that bands like The Offspring, blink-182, or the roster of D4’s future home Fat Wreck Chords were making at the time.
But D4 were not your typical pop punk band. For one thing, all four of their members were huge fans of NYHC. Yes, the same hokey crossover bands that laid the groundwork for fucking Converge also influenced a band probably best known for a song Green Day shamelessly ripped off and got a career resurgence off of. They also loved NOFX, Jawbreaker, Motorhead, and just about any 80s post-hardcore band you can think of (especially that one.) Safe to say, such a diversity of influences makes Midwestern Songs a weird fucking album. Think about how opener “O.K.F.M.D.O.A,” a sugary hook-fest with some sprinkles of gruff vocals, is followed by “#51 Dick Butkus,” a song that’s basically 50% hardcore breakdown.
Despite these contrasting songwriting styles, Midwestern Songs manages to be pretty cohesive. A lot of it has to do with the album’s theme. Unlike Refused, who threw in their odds and ends catalog of samples, D4 styled their album around the joke that the album is actually just a test record used to see if your record player is spinning properly. As a result, the songs get referred to as “tones” and a hokey white collar instruction-speaker is often taking up the breathing room between songs. Not only does this contrast against the music itself, but it contrasts against the lyrics, which are some of the best of the entire decade in punk. D4 doesn’t lecture their listeners with Marxist theory and rallying cries; they write singalongs about how your boss is an asshole who exploits you, satires of American ignorance and anti-sellout anthems.
If you want to hear how Dillinger Four has influenced punk post-debut, look no further than who gets on the Albums of the Year lists on Punknews.org. Along with bands like Hot Water Music and early Alkaline Trio, D4 is certainly a purveyor of “gruff” pop punk that bands like Off With Their Heads, The Flatliners, The Menzingers, Dead To Me, and PEARS among others have adopted as Dillinger Four has gone radio-silent (recording-wise only, as they recently did some shows playing Midwestern Songs in full.) They’re also one of the favorite bands of power-punk hero Jeff Rosenstock and of Modern Baseball bass player Ian Farmer.
So there you have it. With about half a month of 2018 left, take some time to celebrate the twenty year anniversaries of three of the most influential punk albums of the 90s. And while Refused’s TSOPTC is a standard work of late 90s post-hardcore, maybe reflect on whether it lived up to the artificial hype the band wants you to think it deserves.
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