It’s been 13 years since the last Crime In Stereo record. But although House & Trance is the first new album the band has released since 2010’s I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone, it’s not actually the first album they’ve made since then. Back in 2016, the band—now comprised of Kristian Hallbert (vocals), Alex Dunne (guitar/vocals), Gary Cioni (guitar), Eric Fairchild (bass) and Brett Romnes (drums)—completed approximately 80% of a new album before abandoning it. And while Dunne says it will probably see the light of day sometime in the future (October 27th 2023), going through that process was necessary in order to make this collection of songs.
“It wouldn’t have been the record that people wanted,” he explains, “and it wouldn't have been representative of us and where we were at, so we scrapped all of it. There's nothing from that album on this one. We started again from scratch and did something we felt was representative of what we were capable of, as opposed to sounding like [2007 album] …Is Dead Part Two. Which is cool, but it’s also a record we made a long time ago. Honestly, I think this is the album we should've been making."