Tours: Refused announce final North American tour dates, to release 'Shape of Punk to Come' tribute album

Refused have announced that they will be breaking up again. The band initially broke up in 1998 before reuniting in 2012. The band has announced a final North American tour for 2025 with Quicksand joining them on all dates. The band announced this in an Instagram post which reads in part,

”We were supposed to do this in June. Roll out our modest farewell run, starting with the Rosendal Garden Party in Stockholm and then doing some light touring before calling it quits end of year. The rehearsals had been magnificent, the vibe was great and two days before the show we played a warm up show at Kulturhuset Femman in Uppsala. There were no pictures or video taken but it was a great show in front of maybe 60 local scenesters. We hung out afterwards, I had a few beers and me and Dennis, still vegan and basically straight edge, traded stupid stories about bands we love. It was a fine evening. Next morning I get a call from Dennis’ wife and a couple of tumultuous hours later it’s confirmed that he’s had a heart attack at the hotel.
[…]We gave it several shots between 2012 and 2024. We all have different takes on how it went and what the legacy of the reformed band will be, but personally I felt we couldn’t quite agree on what we were supposed to do musically, and we were still struggling with that when the pandemic hit. Kristofer felt that he’d done what he wanted to do and left the band in august of 2020 and although there was a delayed effect to the death blow, a death blow it was.

So in the beginning of this year we started making plans to have one last big hurrah, to make the end of the band a fun, generous, indulgent affair. And that’s how it felt after the first show, it’s the best we’ve ever sounded and we were really enjoying ourselves, tossing in old songs we haven’t played since the nineties and even a Misfits cover. And then disaster struck. I visited Dennis in the hospital the day after he was admitted and true to form he was not happy about the hospital gown he was forced to wear. Hooked up to all these machines, unshaven with tousled hair, I swear the first thing he said was: (pointing to the gown) 'I mean, this is not great.' I guess they don’t let you wear suits or Negative Approach t-shirts in the hospital.

So on to the good news: Dennis is doing great. He’s one of the healthiest dudes I know, he can’t sit still, exercises a lot and it follows that his recuperation would be swift. He’s gotten excellent care and his doctor has run all the physical tests on him and they all indicate he’s making a full recovery. Needless to say, he’s itching to get back on tour to play shows and he even suggested we should keep preliminary dates set up for the late fall and winter, but we decided to postpone those shows and instead start up in the spring. So yeah, that’s where we’re at. We’re coming to the US in March/April 2025 and we’re looking at what else we can do with the rest of the year, all we know is that we want to finish back home in Sweden at the end of the year. Let us know if there are songs you want us to play and we’ll give them a shot. Hope to see you out there.”

Tickets for this final run go on sale on September 13.

Along with this news, the band has announced that they will be releasing two versions of their 1998 album The Shape of Punk to Come to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The first version of the album comes with previously unreleased demos and alternate versions of songs. The second album is a tribute album called The Shape of Punk to Come Obliterated which features covers of each of the songs by bands including Touché Amoré, Gel, Fucked Up, Zulu, Snapcase, and IDLES. Check out the band’s post in full along with the dates and tribute album tracklist below.

The Shape of Punk to Come Obliterated Tracklist


Gel – Worms of the Senses / Faculties of the Skull

Quicksand – The Liberation Frequency

Brutus – The Deadly Rhythm

Snapcase – Summer Holidays vs. Punkroutine

Idles – New Noise (remix)

Ho99o9 – New Noise

Fucked Up – Refused Party Program

Zulu – Protest Song ’68

Cold Cave – Refused Are Fucking Dead

IGORR – The Shape of Punk to Come

Cult of Luna – Tannhäuser / Derive

Touche Amore – The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax