HMLTD, a band daring to change the face of Popular British music. Formed in 2015 as Happy Meal Ltd, an imposed name change due to the clash with McDonalds, the band pose an androgynous-esque vibrant spectacle to audiences who dare to behold such an overwhelming collision of art and music combined.
The six-piece quite clearly poses a vast knowledge of the past despite claiming to be firmly focused on the future, in terms of their influences. Undertones of Gary Numans ‘Our Friends Electric’ is a song that you can imagine has entered their thinking along with Bowie in style as well as sound. In an interview with Dazed, lead singer Henry Spychalski explains “I don’t think we’ve ever sat around and listened to a band, that’s not something we do.”
They’re first single Stained is something to behold, an overtly sensual pilgrimage into a whole host of musical genres interspersed with ethereal scenes. It is gory and putrid but at the same time it is almost seamlessly beautiful in the vibrancy of colours and art. This was only the start. They are rapidly becoming renowned for their vibrant palette and unique gathering of sounds amongst the indie audiences.
The band which boasts three different nationalities, put to the fore a collation of overt masculinity with femininity to produce a sublime aura both on stage as well as their collection of music videos. They bare no qualms in challenging the current status quo of Popular music and as Spychalski reiterates in an interview with the Guardian, the band are adamant that they want to reinvent the genre “We never want to have to sacrifice being experimental. But we want to change the mainstream, and to do that you need to do it from within, you need the biggest platform possible”. The bands recent signing to Sony has done little to deter fans who clearly buy into the vision Spychalski and his comrades preach.
However, the bands unique aesthetic is something that audiences simply can’t help but react in some way to such a provocative sensory exhibition whether it be positive or negative. The impulsive nature of the band is somewhat mirrored in the viewer’s decision to react. Spychalski is clearly keen to impose this on the audience, he describes how one person at their Leeds gig even shaved his head to mimic him. He recalls in his Guardian interview how one of the band members was chased away from a gig in Dijon, France for being “a bit glamorous”.
Love them or hate them HMLTD have started something that is showing no signs of wavering, an absurd assault on the senses.
