In the ‘90s, there were a handful of truly ground-breaking post-hardcore bands that garnered legendary posthumous status with seminal albums, influencing hordes to come in the 2000s. Refused was one of these bands, The Shape of Punk to Come their magnum opus. Like Botch (a personal fave of the era), they were well ahead of their time. Like another, At the Drive-In, they’d break up soon after TSoPtC’s release, but do some reunion shows in 2012. Unlike either of those groups, they’d return to wax this year minus a guitarist with Freedom.

If you’re familiar with a band like this (which, in the case of Refused, I actually wasn’t), there’s just no way to be objective on their reunion record. It’s impossible to avoid comparing it to the group’s defining work. How could you not? When a genre-shifting album sees its creator disappear for decades, the landscape is drastically changed upon that artist’s return; their legacy influenced protégés who have ran with the ball and their original album, no matter how timeless, has necessarily aged at least somewhat.

Refused, ever the iconoclasts, confront this idea with a simple “we make music for us, not for your expectations” approach. Their lyrics are still revolutionary and anti-capitalist, and dive even deeper into incidents relatively unknown stateside. For instance, the classist “genocide” of “Françafrique:”

francafrique

This is just one specific example of the greater theme, spelled out simply in “Useless Europeans:” white Europeans are plumb worthless, only cruelly adept at imperial subjugation while living in “houses of glass:” “Go back to sleep/Dream a new dream/No more Europeans.”

This is par for the Refused course. The “fuck your expectations” mindset is reflected in the album’s sounds. Funky grooves abound, and brass backing pops up throughout. The problem is, some of the experimentation here conflicts with Refused’s very credo that revolutionary lyrics hold no water when undercut with ‘mainstream’ sounds. They’ve made a point to rebel against our assumptions of them as a band, but did so with cheesier fare at times. In these instances they’re throwing in material even more historically grounded in mainstream than the most cliched emo band. The jazzy “doots” on “Destroy the Man” especially are more likely to take you back to high school jazz choir than incite a revolution.

Of course, at other times, these explorations prove to be extra heavy. There’s some undeniable jams here, like the mathy, metal-guitar riffage of opener “Elektra,” and a lot of the non-hardcore experiments are dope, too. “366” has a solid groove riff, for instance, and the aforementioned “Useless Europeans” holds even more apocalyptic power in its sounds than its words.

But, even when ignoring the impulse to compare it to TSoPtC, it’s still a patchy record, averaging above ‘so-so,’ but below ‘awesome.’ Like their earlier material, it grows on you with repeated listens, but it arguably doesn’t hit as hard this time.