Laminated

So I turn 18 at the end of this month, and a co-worker of mine wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday. I told her to get me the Refused DVD since that is coming out in the US just a few days before my big day. I am a Refused fanatic, so I have been waiting for this DVD for quite some time.

Now I had emailed Epitaph like 3 months ago about getting a press package including the new DVD for review on this website, but they never responded to my email, so I just forgot all about it. I guess Hilary (PR lady at Epitaph) did indeed get my email and she did remember me, because just a few days ago, I got the DVD in the mail. I instantly put this thing in my DVD player and turned up the volume on my television… I turned it way up.

Now I knew that this DVD was going to be epic, because Refused are an epic band (see The Shape of Punk to Come), but I had no idea what I was getting into until I starting watching this thing. The DVD features a melancholy documentary in Swedish (there are subtitles) about the final days of the band, including footage of their final show, which was interrupted and then shut down by the cops during “Rather Be Dead”, ironically before vocalist Dennis Lyxzen could scream out the line “Rather be alive”.

The other main feature of the DVD is a live video for each song off of The Shape of Punk to Come, excluding “The Apollo Programme Was A Hoax” of course. The videos are all from different shows, so you get to see each song performed in a different atmosphere, which I thought was pretty neat.

Last is just the video for “New Noise” and the slug-filled video for “Rather Be Dead”.

Refused Are Fucking Dead turned out to be a very nice early birthday gift from Hilary at Epitaph.