Refused
Re-issues

Whatever they say doesn't matter since they've, to all intents and purposes, disowned it all anyway. Like you say, they broke at their peak. I think music CAN be timeless if it genuinely stands out as a pioneering record. SOPTC was pioneering. Timeless doesn't necessarily mean that you'll like it forever, more that it'll continue to be discovered by younger and younger fans, a la The Beatles, a la Nirvana, etc etc etc... whether Refused like it or not. Whatever, they're 'fuckin' dead' after all...

I don't care if now is the time for everyone to be jumping on the 'Refused are legendary' bandwagon or not, but this truly is one of the greatest albums ever. Nice review.

saw SOPTC it in selectadisc t'other day in *3* different packages.
stick it to the man, you crazy lefties.

would love to hear it on SACD tho.

and has "this just might be the truth" been reissued? totally agree with matt about the early stuff.

Yep, Mike's right. 'How many records from the 70s do young people still pick up and get into to? Not that many. Black Sabbath perhaps, or maybe Jimi Hendrix? I should imagine most parents have stopped listening to their dusty Sabbath vinyls but the music is timeless because no matter what style or trend is flavour of the day young people can still tap into their music.

Whether or not I'll personally be listening to Refused in ten years time I'm sure that very few other 'hardcore' or 'punk' acts will be making music anywhere near as challenging as Refused. It was very much ahead of its time and, as such, stands out in a league of its own. That is what makes it so timeless, that its content and its message will never be outdated.

exactly, born against wern't trying to be something they wern't either - they just took themselves at face value. and fucking ruled too.

True about pioneering, but no musicians are pioneering anyway - everyone borrows what they need from whatever they like and mixes them. When they're mixed in a way that's not been heard (much) before, it sounds pioneering, although, in fairness, it's just clever exploitation. Refused, like I've already said, will remain timeless in terms of being constantly rediscovered by an ever-growing scene, but, like Mr Younger says, they were never breaking any overly new ground. They were clever boys who looked beyond the established boundaries of the scene/genre they were shoehorned into, and for that they deserve acclaim. Love them or loath them, they were rarely boring, and SOPTC still makes me dance. I mean, come on... if you DON'T feel the urge to throw yourself off something tall when you hear "Can I SCREAM!?" then you don't know you're alive.

Fuck, me too. Bed though - my chair is a bit too unstable and you get more bounce. Great minds.

I'll no doubt be seen as picky, and I don't mean to take away from a review, and subsequent discussion by Mike that I largely agree with. I love this album. Or rather, and this sounds silly I know, but I like the feeling the album gives me rather than the album itself. I know this sounds like an old argument, but I continue to find it upsetting that a place in the musical canon is still widely regarded as the height of success. Unfortunately, those musicians that don't get deleted and forgotten by all but a few hardcore fans, by definition, tends to consist of what to my ears is watered down boredom-on-wax rather than genuine experimentalism. However, I'd argue that, much more than the result of corporate cynicism, this situation is the product of the "classic" credentials placed on certain acts by lazy music critics who are unable to get a long-term picture of their role in shaping the music industry, have a painfully tame taste in music, and are willing to swallow outdated, conservative ideas about "culture" and "taste". This isn't just bad for individual artists, but bad for musical innovation in general - if it doesn't sell, because the right people don't shout about it, musicians are forced to compromise or give up.

This site is often a welcome exception in its anti-mainstream stance, but even so, virtually every available publication, even those that are supposed to be "radical" keep up this pretence that there's such a thing as "objectively good" or "classic" music. I'm sure we all find ourselves doing it, but it is, honestly, bollocks. Though Refused specifically claimed to share this point of view, they still gabble on about 1960s and 70s French philosophers as if it makes their message more credible, and seem to base everything they say in their "communiques" on early 20th century Frankfurt School Critical Theory, which is for the most part hysterical, hostile and contemptuous, and relies on so many unrealistic "revolutionary" mantras that it turns out as a mirror image of conservatism. This is why, though I enjoy Refused's music, I've always seen them as faintly comical faux-radicals.

See the Observer Music Magazine's latest 100 British records of all time. I assume anybody reading this site will think the magazine is shit anyway, but when you think about it, the idea of being able to lump creative activity spanning large periods of time, and wildly different circumstances into one category, "music", and then placing it in order of "greatness" is nonsensical conservative bullshit. Each time you get the same old things pulled out from under the bed: The Stone Roses, The Beatles, The Smiths: "safe" choices for people who have no desire to go out and find new, exciting sounds. This is all just conservatism masquerading as "cool": reassurance for people who want to be comfortable that they are listening to, and copying, the "right" music. The point is that suggesting that people can't be blamed for this does not mean we shouldn't try to change it. As far as I'm concerned, the Beatles, through no real fault of their own, terminally damaged the music industry as much as they revolutionised it, because Beatlemania really consolidated the arbitrary, hype-driven, reactionary, retrospective religion that "popular culture" has become: "cool", "good" or "true" is always just another type of dogma. The reason this is so virulent is that there is no corporate conspiracy, it is simply the cumulative effect of an endless series of acts of inculcation and complacency.

I'm just worried about Refused turning into the very thing they would have hated - a band whose name people brandish as a badge of credibility. They had always seemed to be an exception to this. On the other hand, I'll have to hear Born Against before deciding whether they Refused were rip-off merchants, but you also have to realise that refusing to like Refused just because they were influenced by earlier artists that you've heard of and others haven't (and this isn't an accusation against anybody in particular, but something I find myself doing) is as affected and shallow as borrowing taste from a magazine.

One of the best ways that websites like this can fight the hierarchy and inertia in creative activity is by trying not to maintain the fiction of "timeless music". The obsession with the timelessness and greatness of certain artists genuinely impedes the process of musical innovation. Different types of music are listened to for different reasons, and go in and out of fashion, and personally see no point in even comparing them - just tell people what they sound like, how they make YOU feel, and what relation they have to the music industry and creative processes in general. There is still plenty to talk about without maintaining the mythology of transcendent "goodness" or encouraging people to rank things.

Rant over.

I am listen Refused. It is nice.

Sorry to rattle on, but this "softer" use of the word "timeless" just describes another unhelpful side-effect of the process which drives the music industry, rather than something "real" or to be welcomed on a long-term basis. People thrive on the reassurance they get from dogma. Individual people continue to listen to certain things that they have always listened to, say, the Beatles, because when they get older, they don't have the time or inclination to listen to new music, and they are continually reassured by unimaginative journalists that this is what they "should" be listening to. People listen to the journalists from their own social milieu, that they already agree with, then take this agreement as proof that their views are objectively "correct". Hence Beatles records don't get deleted and a new generation "discovers" them and people continue to base new music on them. Its a relentless vicious circle whereby assumptions are constantly confirmed for the wrong reasons and creativity is always stifled.

Personally, I now find Nirvana almost unlistenable, but this is not a comment on how "good" they are, just that I, personally, don't like them anymore. I have no problem with people not liking the same things as me, but I do have a problem with the inflation of culture into a kind of pernicious religion which is so pervasive that people don't know they are practising it, and even try and defend it when people are trying to make their lives easier by undermining it. The reason it is so pervasive is that there is nobody that is "right" or "stupid", but the myth that they are comes at us from all angles: we are taught it in school, by our parents, by politicians, and even most of the social theorists who ultimately feed them, because nobody has thought of a genuinely new philosophical paradigm since the 19th century! It's all bullshit. "Art" is no more "real" than "God", and in the words of Miocene, "tradition is just another name for the collective habit."

I know people mistake this view for "postmodernism", or even nihilism (it's neither), but I don't see the point of trying to put objective labels onto anything (note the distinction between a name and an "objective"/"true" state of affairs - this is the problem of left-wing politics: social fundamentalism). Far be it from me to tell what people to like or dislike. The point is that we shouldn't confuse a perfectly legitimate commitment to relativism in taste with the satisfaction that we are all "right".

What I'm ultimately talking about is having concern for the long term ability of musicians to do what they want and make a living from it, without having to make the choice between compromising because of corporate constraints, or remaining in obscurity and/or poverty, and a society in which people don't have this constant anxiety over whether or not they are listening to "the right" music.

Don't even dare deny it. If you didn't have it you wouldn't be reading this website.

Chiaroscuro, I think anyone on this site is prone to a bit of name-dropping, aren't they?

Maybe we should ask why have you typed several long screeds on this subject. Is it because you want to be seen as an intellectual torch-keeper who has never indulged (and would never indulge) in something as churlish as name dropping?

Your comments have indeed been extremely valuable and wonderfully erudite, and personally I thank you for that. However, you have shot yourself in the foot by whipping around on others who have different comments than your own (such as your petty 'grow up' comment). If some of the people here have an agenda that consists of 'name dropping', what is YOUR agenda? And what in hell makes it more valid?

It's a music site, Chiaroscuro. People are always gonna name drop, puffing out their chests in an attempt to be an avatar of musical knowledge/taste. But surely this is part of the fun, non? I mean, if no-one indulged in name dropping, you would have no real context in which to place some of your earlier rants.

In short, if some on this board need to grow up, you certainly need to relax a little. Don't be so suspicious of people.

i bought/"got" a sabbath 7" last week.
i am going to cover iron man in a folktronic stylee.

and hendrix was way more 60s

brilliant band, brilliant album, you might get this from my username, anyway...

Shit me, that was easier than I thought. Like the Late Review, except without Germaine Greer, Tom Paulin or Mark Kermode engaging in empty sophistry or shovelling dirty dirty rhetorical coal into their furious ego-furnaces.

is the late review where they slag off the killers etc before jools holland?
and cheers to chiaroscuro (sp perhaps?) for bothering to engage a decent discussion

And where words like 'somnambulance', 'verisimilitude' and 'floccinoccinihilipilification' are bandied about with gay abandon