Refused : "New Noise"

I am forever going on about Swedish music on these pages and happened to stumble onto this site. Scandinavian Sounds features the views of someone exiled in Sweden, and it is a great way to keep up to date with the country with such a Rich and vibrant music scene.

Browsing through the pages, I was reminded of the fantastic hardcore punk band Refused. I bought their album "A Shape of Punk To Come" in 1998 and was blown away by it. Sadly, they split up not long after it and some members went on to form The (International) Noise Conspiracy.

The video above is off the first song I heard form Refused. "New Noise" is an absolute stunner of track somhow featuring hardcore punk guitars and electronica elements. Politcally charged, this is what punk music should be about.

"This album marked a sharp and conscious departure from Refused's earlier work. The philosophy of the album, expounded in the ample liner notes and encapsulated in the song "New Noise", was that punk and hardcore music could not be anti-establishment by continuing to package revolutionary lyrics in sounds which had been increasingly co-opted into the mainstream. The sound of the record presented a challenge to existing punk sensibilities; its sounds were 'punk' at a fundamental level, but worlds apart from pop punk bands such as and Blink 182, and more political pop punk bands such as Bad Religion".