EP Review: Refused - 'The Malignant Fire'
It’s something of tradition for Swedish post-hardcore stalwarts Refused to release an EP between each full-length, so it was little surprise when, nearly a year after the release of their fifth album War Music, that The Malignant Fire was announced.
Four brand new tracks and one taken from the last album, The Malignant Fire is fifteen minutes of Refused at their frenetic and visceral best. Bold, brash and utterly uncompromising, what it lacks in the youthfulness of earlier cuts, it more than makes up for through its sheer anger and disenfranchisement.
Opening track ‘Malfire’ begins with ominous guitar bends and a mounting sense of anticipation before a frenetic and propulsive bottom end kicks in, dragging listeners into the band’s trademark motoric post-hardcore almost instantly. Sharing much in common with Refused’s seminal anthem ‘New Noise’, there’s a sense of inexorable and industrial forward motion driving the track forward with little relent.
It’s something that runs not just through ‘Malfire’, but through The Malignant Fire as a whole. ‘Faceless Corporate Violence’ for instance is an angular and jagged affair, its guitars muted and disjointed, yet harbouring an almost hypnotic effect in their delivery.
Though Refused having never been a band content with the global socio-political climate, it seems things have reached fever pitch in 2020, and The Malignant Fire feels like a direct reflection of such; the band’s piss and vinegar approach boiling over to the point in which it can’t be contained.
‘Jackal’s Can’t Be Bothered to Dream’ is that point. Three minutes of frenetic and angular post-hardcore, militant bass and drums stay true to Refused’s traditional steadfast bottom end, while elsewhere it feels almost more akin to thrash metal than anything that it proceeds.
Blisteringly aggressive and completely unapologetic, the release of the The Malignant Fire couldn’t feel timelier. Dark, driven, and completely pissed off, this is the sound of 2020.
Words by Dave Beech