Canada’s greatest underground hardcore band return with a dark second album.
Truck Violence are not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. There are plenty who will not connect with the difficult themes and almost unstable mental spaces presented here. If you like your guitar music challenging, complex and with a dose of aggression then this might end up being one of your favourite albums released this year.
Imagine if the oddball locals of Duelling Banjos fame in Deliverance decided to make a hardcore album and you are pretty much where this album lands. Truck Violence are a refreshingly different oddity in the musical landscape with a truly explosive live show. Kudos to anyone attending their UK tour in the next week, they will not disappoint. Part spoken word poetry, part folk music, part ultimate hardcore band.
Karsyn Henderson is one of the most fascinating and extraordinary figures in modern world music. His fragmentary and confessional writing style trigger finished results that flit between brilliance and darkly unsettling. Previous album Violence was fairly lyrically difficult but this one is a whole step up in craziness. ‘Compelled By Christy’ comes in as one of the more normal entries:
“All things are worked
I’m by the Sun’s enfilade of warm fists
And my naked feet squint
Into the usual slush
Usually cold, usually brown
And I remember
Our teeth how yellow, neglecting to brush
The color of the road when you race down the hill
Flat tired bikes and gravel scrapes
With each fall, each fall that we’d take
And all things the same
Are laconic like thieves picking the ink from your pockets”
Tracks like ‘My dog would f**k the air’ and ‘Jaundiced and reaching for a mother’ present some truly challenging imagery. There is a lot that revolves around birth and conception, a lot around decay and illness.
Like debut album Violence, the music is hardcore put, at times, through a folk music blender, there is still the desire to achieve imperfection. Mistakes are retained. It increases the immediacy of the end-product. Production is minimal and unintrusive.
Last year it was Ethel Cain’s Perverts that really challenged our ears but came out with something interesting. This is an equally extraordinary offering. It increases the likelihood that Truck Violence will stay as a niche interest. You feel if they can just temper their extremist edges a little they are likely to connect far wider.
Essential Tracks: ‘New Jesus’ and ‘Your name, It’s Walking.
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