Truck Violence : The weathervane is my body
It’s hard for me to imagine, offhand, a more brutal pair of words than “truck violence.” Both words loom large in the nastier ranks of the English language (“truck” feels to me like an onomatopoeia for vomiting when divorced from its literal definition; “violence” is what it is). The right-wing adoption of vehicular slaughter in recent times brings the name’s sickening nature home that much more. Montreal’s Truck Violence sound exactly like their name suggests—a post-hardcore, sludge-tinged attack that’s often compelling. Sophomore effort The weathervane is my body builds on their arresting if disorganized debut Violence to showcase a leaner, sharper sound.
Music in this lineage, from Black Flag to Converge and Drain, rarely minces words. “Every morning I am clueless!” barks lead vocalist Karysn Henderson on opening track “My dog would fuck the air,” a sentiment quite suited for our “post-truth” era. Preview single “New Jesus” finds Henderson citing the horrors of sexual assault, bellowing “Over 60 cases thrown out for lack of evidence!” and making a rather horrific rhyme of “reparations” and “rapists.” Even something more abstract like “Your name, it’s walking” still thrives on jarring language like “The viscosity of fluid/As incidental as childhood.”
The main attraction on weathervane is arguably the chaos created by Paul Lecours’ guitars, which sometimes start and end as pummeling riffage and elsewhere shapeshift into noise from clean arpeggiated leads. As on Violence, he sometimes abandons electric fury for banjo and slide guitar that sound equal parts forlorn and menacing (the all-acoustic “House caught fire” and “Gerard be quiet;” the metamorphosed coda of “Your name, it’s walking”). Rhythm section Thomas Hart (drums) and Chris Clegg (bass) keep up adroitly, especially the pounding Hart, but like any music with sludge roots, riffs—corrosive, ear-galvanizing riffs—are the primary engine.
That said, Truck Violence’s use of folk instrumentation either as interludes or for entire songs is no gimmick. The band clearly find a through-line to its primary mode of attack in this sound, so much so that “Gerard” evokes Lullaby for the Working Class in both its sound and its sympathy for this world’s forgotten people.
Closer “Kindly, wash yourself” finds Henderson trying on a soaring melody and taking to it well, while the band uses all the genres in their stew of influences (Midwest emo in addition to the aforementioned sludge, hardcore, and folk) to create an equally thrilling backdrop. If this points to a direction Truck Violence wants to try on more than one song in the future, it’s certainly fertile ground for expansion. But I have a strong feeling their sound, whatever its variations, will remain unrestrained.
Label: The Flenser
Year: 2026
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