Hoe definitief het deze keer is weten we natuurlijk nog niet maar de verklaring op facebook waarmee ze vandaag hun afscheid aankondigden klinkt heel wat volwassener en genuanceerder dan het beruchte pamflet waarmee ze de eerste keer hen afscheid aankondigden in 1998.
De Zweedse punkband Refused keerde in 2012, na lang aandringen van fans en industrie, terug naar de podia om hun klassieke laatste LP “The Shape Of PUnk To Come” recht te doen.Uit de verklaring die vandaag publiek gemaakt werd mag blijken dat ze die missie als geslaagd beschouwen en dat de band nu definitief ten grave wordt gedragen. Hun 14 jaar lang uitgestelde afscheidswereldtournee bracht hen dit jaar ook twee maal naar België, naar Groezrock en Pukkelpop. Wie daar niet bij was zal zijn schade dus niet meer kunnen inhalen, tenzij hij rap een vlucht naar Zweden boekt voor het allerlaatste concert.
Hieronder kan je nog de volledige afscheidsbrief nalezen
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.
Thank you for populating the pit in 2012.
Over and out.
