Oh, the sweet sounds of revolution. Civil disobedience never sounded so good in digital, at least, not here, not now, not in America, not as we embark on another year deeper into the new millennium. This is the introduction to an interview with Dennis Lyxzen of (International) Noise Conspiracy, herein referred to only by the initials I.N.C. - can you dig? In an age where bands commonly use their “political stance” to show how core they are to the suits at the labels and move units, I.N.C has used their subversive sound to spark a flame of musical discontent amongst the remnants of what was once the punk/hardcore scene of the 90’s. This isn't some shitty political punk band. This is the new sound for a new movement. Old meets new, east meets west, communist and capitalist coming together to smash it up. Most talk the talk, few walk the walk, and even fewer put their money where their mouth is. I.N.C. has gone above and beyond, not limiting themselves to one scene, one community, spreading their message of unity and social disbelief to the narcissistic youth of planet earth. Intelligent, melodic, today’s sophisticated “get down.” Elvis, Coltrane, Jame Brown, hell, even Rick James would applaud their musical feats. Three albums, their latest, A New Morning, Changing Weather, and there ain’t no stopping them, monitored closely by the CIA, wiretapped by the FBI, and scrutinized by the KGB, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Sweden's original OGs, I.N.C.

Is music irrelevant to the goal of the project?
Well, yeah. If it came down to it, choosing between a world revolution, or playing in a rock band, the choice would be obvious. When it comes to Noise Conspiracy we are a band that is a great many parts music, and a great many parts the message. You can’t really separate one from the other.

Tomorrow is a new day. You wake up in the perfect Socialist utopia. What is it like?
I don’t know. That’s one of the plans. Myself, or no one else in the band, really has any interest in figuring out the world for everybody else. We have certain ideas, and certain guidelines, but to come to terms with a new world is something we all need to do together. I am sure I would wake up a in a world where I didn’t have to work, nobody used money, we all lived collectively and loved each other and had a good time. Free music, free art, entertainment, and good times all over. I guess that’s an equally corny answer, to an equally corny question.

From the beginnings of Refused, to today with INC you have always chosen to use music as a political force to spread ideas and thoughts. What set your interests in motion?
I came to the conclusion that we did have stuff to say. We had ideas we wanted to inspire people with. We like to play, and we see (Noise) Conspiracy as an entertainment tool, but we like to call it “subversive entertainment.” When you have ideas you want to share them with the people, the same with a good song, and that’s the same thing with the political ideas. It always felt natural coming from a punk rock scene where most of the bands I got into early always said shit. It was never just about girls, or cars—bands actually said stuff. Even though, a lot of times it was sort of, “Fucks the Cops!” in a very naive, sort of nihilistic way, but, at least they were trying to say something. It was kind of natural when I started writing lyrics, or we started playing music that we wanted our music to have meaning that went beyond the rock cliches.

Was your first tour as a band China?
Yes, it was.

Very few people, let alone bands, have been to China, or toured it. How did you go about setting that up?
Everything was done totally “unofficial.” We went there as 5 tourists from
Sweden. We had a friend from Hong Kong book the shows. It took him almost 5 months to put together 15 shows. It wasn’t easy. It was a big project, a big deal. It had never been done before so we had to try it. I think we are the first rock band to actually tour China. We didn’t have that much trouble. The cops would show up at some shows, but they didn’t really do anything.

Were you always so revolutionary growing up?
Not really. I was always an outsider as a kid. I didn’t really fit in that much. I never really figured out why and then I became a punk rocker. I sort of figured out, “Yeah, there is a reason why I am fucked up!” My family are not radicals, or anything, they are just ordinary people. The social structures I grew up in never really did it for me. I wasn’t comfortable in them. One day I got into punk rock and that was pretty much it. I couldn’t really play guitar, I couldn’t really sing, I was 14 and I loved the idea of being in a band, so I had to do something. I grew up in a town of 8,000 30 Kilometers outside of Umea. I couldn’t play hockey or soccer, so I started playing music instead.

On the last album you called musicians, “The truest dealers of boredom with their self-appointed suffering and bogus creativity.” What do you guys do as a collective to keep from falling prey to free enterprise or musical dirivity to sell albums?
First of all, we try to base our music on ideas that we feel are important, and when we play live we try to leave a lot of space open for playing live, not just doing a show from point A to point B. We incorporate a lot of stuff that just doesn’t happen on the albums. We try to make every show unique. We just love to play music, so we play different songs every night. It is a hard thing when you are a band. There are a number of rules and restrictions to how to perform music. We never did encores, ever; we always thought it was kind of cheap, rock cliché that we could avoid. Now we’re in Germany and we have to do encores. I kid you not, people return the records if we don’t do encores. It’s kind of a crazy situation when you want to challenge people and they don’t want to be challenged. They are like, “We want the encore! Fuck You!” and we’re like, “All right, here’s your fucking encore!” Bands start out because they want to play music and they want to be creative and do shit, and then bands end up trying to be accountants. The last year of Refused every band meeting was only about money. That kills, especially when you are a socialist, anarchist band, that kills you when that’s all you have to talk about is worrying about money. We’re trying to avoid that with Noise Conspiracy and be as creative and unpredictable as we can. We face the same problems with Noise Conspiracy because we’re doing good as a band. We make more money, and we have to distribute the money on bigger levels, blah, blah, blah. All of sudden there are all these people involved and everybody needs to get paid. And you’re like, “Oh man! I just wanted to play in a band!”