Just when you thought you’d heard it all, along comes Truck Violence to turn hardcore on its head. The Montréal-based folk-informed experimental hardcore outfit, are releasing their debut full-length album “Violence” today, via Mothland. Steeped in the band’s small-town Albertan roots, this amazing offering is a potent mix of contemplative folk instrumentation, King Krule infused weird vocals and explosive noise, creating a sound that is both jarring and introspective.
The band, comprising Karsyn Henderson (vocals), Paul Lecours (guitar/banjo), Chris Clegg (bass), and Ryley Klima (percussion), has crafted a very unique album that delves deep into the struggles and experiences of rural life. The songs are raw and honest, reflecting themes of addiction, abuse, and the search for self-discovery and healing, serving an original testament to the band’s commitment to authenticity.
Written and recorded in singer-poet Karsyn Henderson, guitarist-banjoist Paul Lecours and percussionist Ryley Klima’s basement alongside bassist Chris Clegg, then mixed and mastered by longtime collaborator Noah Baxter, this self-produced experimental epic stylishly amalgamates elements from hardcore, punk, shoegaze, sludge, and folk, disrupting well-structured styles in a way you’ve probably never heard before – carrying a unique spirit that roams somewhere between the countryside, eerie folk, and something nestled in the intricate corners of cities.
In our interview, Truck Violence shared insights into their creative process and the themes that drive their genuine take on hardcore, ephasizing the importance of honesty and family in the creation of “Violence”. They spoke of their commitment to portraying the realities of the Western Canadian countryside, rejecting the romanticized or derogatory depictions often seen in popular culture.
Karsyn Henderson, the band’s lead vocalist, highlighted the cathartic nature of their work, stating, “This album should inspire hope, just as much as it creates a sense of shame. Through this project, we’ve recognized many shameful things in ourselves, these have been let go with much kicking into the music and the art, itself.”
The band is set to launch it with a special performance at Église Saint-Édouard in Montréal on August 16th, 2024.
For a deeper dive into the band’s journey and the making of Violence, read the full track by track rundown below.
Undressed you layn’t before
Here I lay before you entirely naked, with great furtivity and therefore I am not entirely naked, but still my desire to be seen and written about remains.
There is a deep yearning to be remembered, especially for something that is great, but to take the very leap that greatness requires is beyond not my ability, but beyond the threshold of shame’s ever looming potentiality. Will you remember me, will I write you into history if I can, invent that I or you are great and worth being read and reread in some way, this is the song’s place of study.
From the lecture room
The lecture room is the place where burgeons all that we wish to say, to a loved one, to a friend, to those closest and therefore most sensitive to us. And it is also the place where typically that very desire is lost in translation, we do not say what is difficult and what is difficult is often what is necessary, it remains there, sorely unspoken.
The Gash
The Gash is a song about security in art and the difficulty therein, more specifically through the creative process itself, it’s very merit under scrutiny. It is about the counterproductive selectiveness we all too often are blind to when critiquing our creation, the over fixation on a particular flaw, often something purely superfluous, while being willfully ignorant to the bonds that tie us to the ground, inhibiting any climb.
Guns buried in the yard
Sap covers and slows, you are cooking, we are walking through autumn leaves hunting pheasants, you are an alcoholic, you are disappointing. I only wish I could capture the moments as they happened, not as my poetry depicts, not as the song elicits, but as they happened. Somewhere there is a box and in it the depictions are a constant, there must be a series of words or sounds that’ll unlock it for me.
Drunk to death
I am human and terribly flawed, I desperately want you to understand this, only to understand it would be my dying. My beholding has to be within reach, a potential that is realistic enough to maintain its intrigue, but not so much so that I slather here with you in boredom. My father was a man constantly upset that the world did not afford him a break, while too making himself impenetrable, he would and could never tell anyone that he needed one. I believe this to be a leading cause as to the rampant alcoholism and substance abuse I witnessed within my own family.
Along the ditch till town
Along the ditch till town is broken into two main sequences. The first being a painted retelling of my running away from home, using imagery and hot flashes to describe the scene in its very impression, a field, the highway, vehicles, the ditch and such. The second is a stream of consciousness, a rant about my leaving, it is incoherent and also very representative of a child’s reasoning, everything leans on the last and the next, and is the very crux.
He ended the bender hanging
Do you not notice the irrevocability in this all, unshakably you must’ve seen or heard, all that you wanted and needed stared you an arm’s length only a moment ago, but now it is sure that you’ve missed it. This is surely a virus, so pervasive that you begin to compare all current successes to its phantom counterpart, so it is inevitable, you find it all unfeasible and unworth the effort.
I bore you now bear for me
You that hides in the bathroom, just under the sun’s glass marred reach, through that puny thing, I am in love with you and am desperate to see you in the sun. There are things that are learned, filial responsibilities due once all is said and done, I need to have a family, I need to love, I need to wake up to the downed breath of a weekend morning, back home in its unparticularity, in a house, with the successes that to us are all different but meaningfully the same.
