War Music - Refused: Review
are a Swedish punk band legendary for their third record 1998's The Shape Of Punk To Come. The record was an influential and universally acclaimed approach to hardcore punk music in the late 90's. After dropping this classic the groups disbanded and after a long wait re-united to release a fourth record Freedom in 2015.
Review By Lavender:
If you like punk, hardcore punk and post-hardcore there's a good chance you're familiar with Refused and The Shape Of Punk To Come but if you somehow aren't you should get familiar quickly because it is an excellent record for the genre that was considered a classic the moment it was released. The bands comeback record 2015's Freedom wasn't amazing but it was far from the disaster many comeback records turned out to be and saw the band sounding surprisingly energetic for their veteran status. I was excited for this record because they seem to still be pretty in tact with the modern hardcore punk music scene, but on War Music the band does a lot right, but unfortunately never really sound authentic.
The lead single for this record really grabbed me and ended up being one of my favorite songs on the entire record. Blood Red is an absolute rager and a flat out blistering punk tune with an amazing lead vocal performance, I enjoy just about every part of this track. The second and third singles ended up being the opener and closer to the record and I think both are decent, but very different kinds of songs. REV001 gets the record started and sounds like a cross between Rage Against The Machine and At The Drive In so while it isn't the most creative track I've ever heard it's sound was coming from a good place. Economy Of Death is the closing track and comes right out of the Marilyn Manson book from the early 2000's, it also sounds like something that wouldn't be too much of a stretch fitting in on Shape Of Punk To Come.
There are some other good tracks with strong influences here too, I Wanna Watch The World Burn sounds like an unreleased AFI song from around 2003. I love the incendiary lyrics and the great lead melody paired with the wired out guitars. Damaged III and The Infamous Left both have some big time Tom Morello worship in their instrumentals. Damaged has one of the weaker hooks but the instrumental makes up for it and Infamous is the opposite with a fantastic vocal performance that could use an instrumental with some more creativity or bite.
Unfortunately across this entire record there is just a problem with the band sounding not very genuine, and on the tracks without exciting instrumentals or great songwriting it is even more apparent. Turn The Cross has a pretty good instrumental with a lot of sharp and consistent transitioning between passages. Unfortunately it is really all in vein as the songwriting itself can never really get a foothold and doesn't have much of an overall progression given it has one of the weakest hooks on the entire album. Violent Reaction has one of the most annoying stop and start vocal refrains that get super annoying super quickly and the tracks instrumental never really develops into anything I enjoy. Malfire is a track that just feels wrong from the very start, it tries to carry the same energy as much of this record but as I said earlier it just feels so disingenuous and kind of makes it hard to believe in anything they are saying or playing. Finally is Death In Vannas which has the campiest instrumental here and one of the sappiest vocal passages which both clash hard with the more explosive sound the song is going for in every other department making for a generic and disappointing series of misconceived passages.
War Music is far from the disaster of a comeback album that so many bands have been dropping across this decade, and Refused themselves even dropped a solid one a few years ago, That being said aside from a song or two namesake is really the only thing this decent record has over a sea of other decent hardcore punk records you could hear this year, and I'd love to see Refused do something going forward to once again separate themselves. 6/10
