Refused announce new album, Freedom

Swedish hardcore heroes Refused are getting ready to release their first set of new music in 17 years. On June 30, the band will release Freedom, their official follow-up to their legendary 1998 album, The Shape of Punk to Come, via Epitaph. That’s the album cover above. Listen to new song “Elektra” below, via the visualizer.

This will likely come as a surprise to fans who took the band at face value when they said they were breaking up for good, again, after their 2012 reunion tour. But earlier this year, they announced a new set of tour dates (including some with the recently reunited Faith No More), and now they’ve got new music to show for it.

“It’s not a reunion anymore,” Dennis Lyxzén says in a statement. “This is one of the most radical things we’ve ever done, both musically and lyrically.”

“Nobody wanted us to fuck with the image of the band who makes a great album and splits up,” said drummer David Sandström. “Nobody wanted us to dilute it. That actually provoked us.”

Freedom was produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Killing Joke, Kate Bush), and the songs “Elektra” and “366” were produced and co-written by Shellback, the Swedish producer who has work on hits by Taylor Swift and Britney Spears.

Refused Freedom tracklist:

1 Elektra
2 Old Friends / New War
3 Dawkins Christ
4 Françafrique
5 Thought Is Blood
6 War on the Palaces
7 Destroy the Man
8 366
9 Servants of Death
10 Useless Europeans