Crime In Stereo Return With “Hypernormalisation” Single & Announce New Album “House & Trance”

It may have been 13 years since the last record, but Crime In Stereo are back with the announcement of their forthcoming album, House & Trance, which is set for release on 27th October via Pure Noise Records. Lead single Hypernormalisation analyses the apathy of people in the face of their imminent demise whilst the additional streaming song, Books Cannot Be Killed By Fire, turns its acerbic eye to recent and ongoing Republican efforts to whitewash American history and restrict access to its truth. House & Trance feels like the natural next step for Crime In Stereo, it was entirely self-produced by the band and flows on so well from their past that it’s almost like the intervening decade and a bit hasn’t happened.

This collection of songs not only sound sonically incredible but are riddled with the anguish of life and existence in 2023, both musically and lyrically. They’re not just reflective of these times, the effects of late-stage capitalism and neoliberalism, the encroaching dominance of fascism within the US political system, the increasing alienation and isolation that comes from the purposeful eradication of community by corporate politics, but of the immense human collateral damage that comes with all of that. As much as it’s symbolic of the universal environmental and systemic crises the world faces right now, it also operates, as Crime In Stereo songs always have, on a more personal level. Towards the end of making the album, guitarist Alex Dunne had to be rushed in from a session for emergency surgery after developing a septic infection from that almost killed him, a brush with mortality that seeps into the songs.

Yet for all the righteous anger about the big issues that inspired these songs, there’s something very vulnerable and human at their core, namely the struggle to exist in an increasingly dystopian world when the odds are already stacked against you. Interestingly, that’s what inspired the album’s title. Not only does it serve as a double entendre about music, and the band’s refusal to be pigeonholed into the hardcore / post-hardcore scene, but it captures the perseverance that it takes to merely survive in the wretched world humans have made for themselves. While this album as a whole, offers a scathing indictment on the state of the union, it wasn’t actually intended to be overtly political. That’s just what it became as an accurate reflection of the times and what the powers that be are doing.

“It’s so exhausting being a reasonable human being in 2023 in the United States of America. It’s exhausting looking around and being like, ‘What’s the fucking matter with you people? I’m not taking ludicrous positions on extreme political outlooks. It’s just like, ‘Hey, can you stop tearing those babies away from their parents and putting them in cages?’ Is that an outlandish position to take? Can people have healthcare? Can people not get shot in school or in church or at the goddamn mall or in a movie theater? But you say things like that and then other people are like, ‘Oh, you’re taking a political position.’ It’s so fucking insulting on a human level.” (vocalist Kristian Hallbert)