A lovely lightning show caused a hiccup during the Murder City Devils‘ set. Tech guys forced the band to stop as they prepared for the worst, and thousands of punks sat in the rain. Then the band came back on to finish with a bang.

And finally, the long-awaited return of Refused! Yes, yes, Refused is alive, no longer dead, we’ll get that out of the way. So I first fell pretty hard for this Swedish band when I got The Shape of Punk to Come to review for my college newspaper, only to hear of their breakup months later with that infamous manifesto. The heartache!

But then, a million years later, they reunited for Coachella and some other festivals. Once it was announced they’d be headlining PRB, my wee heart fluttered again.

Everyone was so excited to see Refused. It had been drizzling, there was lightning, and weather apps were reporting a 70% chance of rain, but it didn’t matter — this was Refused! They started off with “Elektra” (the first single off their upcoming album) and it was amazing. Everyone was singing along, dancing, watching Dennis Lyxzén gloriously bust some moves. Punk rock reunion! Revolution! So much fun! But then the starry-eyed romance of the night took a vomit-inducing turn.

It’s just so hard to focus on the band when the guy in front of you is hunched over, heavily gyrating and grinding up against his lady friend, sloppily kissing her all over, rubbing her crotch to the beat, and stopping every once in a while to cheer himself(?) on. At one point, a security guard stopped by to make sure everything was consensual, but it was pretty obvious these two were on another planet. You’d think maybe this would have happened when Turbonegro was getting everyone to sing “I Got Erection.” But, nope. Eventually we moved to the other side of the crowd and all was well again, but the image of that couple has forever stained my brain. Thanks. Really.

Refused were so tight and played several songs from the aforementioned album. And, of course, they ended their encore with “New Noise,” with the audience doing most the screaming.

All in all, a day to remember for all time!