Refused Stream New Album Freedom, Discuss Firing Guitarist Jon Brännström

Photo by Dustin Rabin

Refused will release Freedom, their first album in seventeen years, on June 30. Now, they’ve made it available for streaming through Pandora. Check it out here.

The band has also opened up about the firing of guitarist Jon Brännström, which was made public last November after Brännström posted a lengthy note to the group’s Facebook page. In an interview with Consequence of Sound, the band said he was fired sometime in 2013, but maintained access to the Facebook page “for some reason.”

“We told him we wanted to do a new record, and we didn’t want him in the band,” the band’s David Sandström said. “It’s just one of those things that happens in bands. He wasn’t committed. The thing with Refused is that we’re all performing at a pretty high level. We like a good challenge. He really doesn’t sacrifice himself for anyone else, so he couldn’t be a part of it.” As for the Facebook post, David Sandström said, “He was just trying to sabotage us for some reason.”

“It wasn’t really a big deal,” Dennis Lyxzén said. “He’s just pissed… It didn’t work out, but that’s just part of any work relationship.”

In Brännström’s original Facebook post, he said, “I wasn’t given a reasonable explanation and wasn’t even invited to sit down and talk about it… We’ve always been better at punk rock than democratic processes and dealing with conflicts, so I guess I’m not too surprised it went down like this. “

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