Keep your lighting bars firmly screwed down, these were two of the most high energy sets of the day!

Skunkworm

Skunkworm are all about the live show. They have no formal releases, though they do have a full set worth of their own songs. They have a range of influences through post-punk, grunge, rock and hardcore. They also just clearly love music. They were present all day at The Facebar watching other acts and were quick to get a mosh going whenever a song warranted it.

We only caught the end of their set, but it was a memorable couple of tracks. On the final one the guitarists were out in the crowd and their singer was hanging from the lighting rig. He followed this up with a spot of breakdancing on the floor before being unceremoniously dragged around by other members of the band. 10 out of 10 for enthusiasm.

We were gutted not to catch the whole thing, but they are at The Purple Turtle on the 19th June so you all have another chance to see them then. https://www.purpleturtlebar.com/#calendar-1b55a3f5-2b2e-4448-be33-d239fac0264d-event-mame3ycj

Truck Violence

In our AYL? preview, we picked out Truck Violence as our number one choice of lesser-known bands on the line-up to go and see, and, thankfully, they did not let us down. This band from out in the Canadian sticks (now living near Montreal) were absolutely explosive from start to finish. Reading Indie Life have seen a lot of bands live… but cannot recall ever seeing a band smashing into each other in a full-on mosh on stage, in their socks, before the first song had barely got going.

The whole set carried on in the same vein. The energy and intensity was off the chart. After a couple of tracks the guitarists, Paul Lecours (guitar/banjo) and Chris Clegg (bass), were in the crowd with the handful of enthusiastic moshers already at it, Skunkworm happily obliged, smashing around with them.

Singer Karsyn Henderson delivered an incredibly powerful and emotive performance. The songs come from a very primal place, and he lost himself to it all, bending and contorting around the stage. At other points, he collapsed to the floor, slumped over a monitor and generally gave it everything.

Their debut album Violence came out last year. It is a bold and challenging listen mixing in elements of hardcore and folk. It isn’t polished, the mistakes and authentic realness are important to them. The set list here was mostly newer material, we will be keenly anticipating the next release. Karsyn talked about where he came from, out in the middle of nowhere in Alberta. He discusses how not many people where he grew up had opportunities to travel and he is very grateful to be getting to see the world with the band.

The sum of Truck Violence’s parts defies easy categorisation. It mixes in everything from poetry to screamo. If Max and the Wild Things, in Where The Wild Things Are, had put on a gig as part of the Wild Rumpus this is what it would have been like. They are a unique entity, shaped by a childhood that stands apart from the modern urban experience of Tik-Tok, YouTube and Minecraft.

These guys are one of those bands, the sort that come out of nowhere and just tears a hole in the music scene… forcing reality to bend around them. Maybe they will be a quirky oddity that stays underground, but equally you could imagine them pulling in a larger following. Their intense honesty and deepfelt emotion has the potential to connect with a bigger audience.

Whenever Truck Violence return to the UK you have a duty to seek them out and experience this for yourself.