Band : Happy Trash Culture

Album title : Comparing The Comfort

Label : Lockjaw

Distributor : Progressive Publicity

Release date : 31/03/2008

Release : CD

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, HTC developed over the period of a couple of years before finding their line-up (comprising lead singer/ guitarist Martin Belve , bassist/ backing singer David Hardenfalk , and drummer Kristofer ), musical direction, and bandname in 2001.

During 2002 they recorded two demoes (the 4-tracked Your Design recorded at the start of the year, the 3-tracked This Demo in November, at Sunlight Studio in Stockholm, with the renowned Tomas Skogsberg as producer), and right before goin' into the studio to record the second, they got news from a New York label that the title track of their first outing was chosen to appear on their 2002 Punk Rock Compilation CD. However, in spite of loving words about the song, no news about an actual release of the compilation can be read in the band's news section of their website happytrashculture.com. In April 2003 the band got over-joyed when a track of theirs was played on national radio P3 's PS Demo show. On the downside a 3-week tour of Poland with Late Night Raid had to be cancelled due to HTC 's poor financial status. In stead the band played its first festival at the 3-day event Demorally , played in-house at Kulturhuset Lava in their hometown. In May 2005 the band return to the   Sunlight Studio , newly re-located to a 19 th century barn next to Tomas ' house, releasing the 4-track Fine Scene Of Plastic Shells demo in August. Then the band is off-line for a while while re-designing their website, and when they come back in April 2005 it turns out their drummer has left to join another band. After some searching the remaining members found a suitably sweet replacement in Johan Östling . His live debut with the band came with the Quarnevalen festival (an event organized by Stockholm students, which happens only every 3 years, and gets huge audiences...possibly because beer is cheap and there's no entrance fee) in early May.

With a couple more songs having been written since the arrival of the new drummer, the band decides to again record with Skogsberg over a lengthy period starting September 2005...this time in order to record 14 songs for a full-length promo CD. The band still struggling with their finances they indeed had to do the recordings in bits and pieces, finally finishing last recordings in late April 2006. Two months later, the track "Change Of Scene" (off the third demo) is featured on the DIST Compilation Vol. 6 by Swedish music site dist.nu. In December the boys went back in the studio for a couple of days, just to fine-tune some of the 14 tracks they'd recorded, but the mixing stages of the promo album (not meant to be sold, but songs off it were posted at myspace.com/happytrashculture) would still be delayed till late May 2007. Meanwhile, the band played its 3 rd festival at Stadparken in Eskilstuna on May 12 th . In late November/ early December the band signed to Lockjaw , and since then things for the band have been getting better slowly, but surely. With promo copies of the album being sent out on time, Germany based radio station Alooga Boom already played the track "All Of Me" in late February. In early March P3 played "Frisky Pet" all over Sweden.

Well, let's concentrate on the material now, shall we? Seems that, when push comes to show, you'll only find 11 tracks on the album, clocking in at just under 35 minutes! Musically, you can expect an adrenalized Grunge which, according to the bio, pays "...homage to early '90s Rock/ Punk bands like Sonic Youth and Mudhoney ...", but with a healthy bit of added aggression, playing "...their own brand of Grunge Hardcore with a political undertone and Chris Isaak influences...". What this is supposed to sound like you can find out by surfing to the band's Myspace page, where they've posted 4 songs off the album. I'm sure you'll agree that in the current musical landscape, these guys from Stockholm bring a breath of fresh air. But then maybe you were not around when this kind of music was popular, and have no ties to it to make you feel nostalgic to times when life in general was somewhat smoother?

90/100

Tony.