Refused

Dennis Lyxzén drops to one knee mid-scream while David Sandström, Kristofer Steen, Magnus Flagge, and Mattias Bärjed hold the room at The Observatory in Santa Ana on May 25, 2015, five weeks before Freedom came out, still playing like every song is an argument that has to be won.

I got into this band in 1998, at 13, off a Punk-O-Rama compilation from a record store in Oceanside I visited every summer, and it took years before I even realized Lyxzén also fronted The (International) Noise Conspiracy. I caught their 2012 reunion at the Glass House in Pomona the night before Coachella, then followed them to the Warfield in San Francisco the next week, but this was the first time I ever got full pit access to shoot them. It went into my photo book Break Free, and Lyxzén reached out for a copy after seeing it.