REFUSED
SONGS TO FAN THE
FLAMES OF DISCONTENT
[ Victory
Records ] 1996 >[ current: Burning
Heart ]
"The game is over. The damage is done. Fuck you for playing
along" - Return to the Closet
America,
1996:
William is, thankfully, President of these Fifty States. To most Americans,
"elevated terror
alert" is just a way to describe continuing
White supremacy and its useless existence. O'bin Laden states "The
Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two
Sacred Places".
Amerikka,
1996: June 15th: Ella Fitzgerald's
marvelous life ends. September 7th: Tupac Shakur is shot in
Las Vegas, Nevada [he dies 6 days later]. June 7th: Sweden's
REFUSED release Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent
[see also: Joseph Hillström]. Songs to Fan opener
"Rather be Dead" would be REFUSED's final song performed at
a house show in Harrisonburg, Virginia only a few years later.
"You knew what I was going to say. And when I didn't I did
anyway, it seems. And I'll survive with self respect intact. And you??"
- Worthless Is The Freedom Bought...
10 years after its inception, Songs
to Fan the Flames of Discontent
makes just as much [if not much more] sense to a World that continues
to melt, fray and be misled. Anthems for revolutionaries on the steady
march to recover and set flame to flags of injustice, REFUSED knew how
to prepare the intelligent machine and exactly when to abort the mission
[1998's The
Shape of Punk to Come].
It is agreed that many might have secured all of REFUSED's back catalogue
after witnessing the genre-bending music video for "New Noise"
[Shape
of Punk] - and there is no fault in that undertaking. What should
be addressed is the mission within these documents - the battle cries
for freedom -- every breath of each lyric feeding solely off the desire
to teach further truth to the educated listener[s].
"The bait. The prey. The mice. Debate the method of demise.
Debate your high. I'll lie beside you, walk you down and lay
the beat beneath your bed. Beneath the dead."
- Hook, Line and Sinker
Years before any Disco was in a "Panic" - years
before the lil' giggle-snot Bush would set a new bar for ignorance
in global leadership - years before invisible wool was such
an obvious choice for Republicans to combat mounds of errors with
- there was [and always will be] Songs
to Fan the Flames of Discontent. Sure -
you can simply hear the deadly rhythms evident on Songs and
go smack at a few white walls, but it is after you :pause:
> read > attempt to decipher the stark justice this album holds
that bulbs begin to flash in the brightest
fucking pulses! This listener - ten years later -
is still learning.
"I'd rather be dead than alive
by your tradition" ["But I'd rather be alive"]
- Rather be Dead
:k
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