On 21st December 2025, Swedish post-hardcore stalwarts Refused played their final gig in the group’s hometown of Umeå. A sweaty and teary affair, Refused unleashed a rolling broadside over a brisk 90 minutes, unfurling the entirety of the band’s dedication to weighty and outspoken hardcore in a fierce and conclusive salvo.
As tastefully monochrome images of the band embracing were dragged and dropped onto social pages, you would assume that after thirty-plus years of sonic vitriol the group might sit back for a bit of R&R; a bit of fika maybe? Maybe this would have been the right move considering the sum of their next enterprise: doom metal/free jazz/noise-rock project, Backengrillen.
Comprising Refused’s vocalist Dennis Lyxzén, bassist Magnus Flagge and drummer David Sandström alongside the free jazz sax/flute playing of Mats Gustafsson (Jim O’Rourke, Sonic Youth, The Ex, etc.), Backengrillen boast that their debut was written on a Thursday during their first ever rehearsal, performed live on the Friday, and then recorded on Saturday. Frankly, I believe them. While there are some invigorating moments of mass and anguish in the skronking of baritone saxes and tectonic shifts of Big Muff bass distortion, the skeleton holding up the record’s bolshy corpus is malformed and osteoporotic.
These structural deficiencies are located in the most vital organ of a release: the actual songwriting. Take ‘Dör för långsamt’ for instance, a thumping, orcish movement of clubbing drums and wailing sax built off two shifting notes. After applying this sonic gesso, the anticipation of detail, development, anything is palpable. But no, the same two notes and horn shrieks are all we are given albeit with a few repeated phrases from Lyxzén mirroring the saxophone.
It is this persistent inertia that brings down what has the potential to be a savage and mauling blend of berserk free jazz and bludgeoning doom metal. Backengrillen’s finest moments are when they lean into both the heft of their muscle à la the excellent opener ‘A Hate Inferior’ and the agitation of their vigour on the title track ‘Backengrillen.’
Unfortunately, these sparks of vitality are but flashes in the pan of an aimless and awkward release. As genres, free jazz and doom can lean more into cultivating a mood than developing traditional song structures, but outside the versatility of Gustafsson or the power of Flagge, there simply isn’t enough here to stay engaged with – especially when four of the five tracks come close to or exceed the ten minute mark.
Too often Backengrillen feels like the result of musicians jamming together for the first time. After striking an initial riff, they sit on it ad infinitum, seized by the collective fear that dare someone chance a chord change they will all be lost at sea.
