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Our recurring feature series CoSign puts the spotlight on a rising artist who has caught our eyes and ears with a great new release. On this edition, we connect with Canadian sludge rockers Truck Violence to chat about ambition, why most lyrics are bad, and their impressive new album, The weathervane is my body.
“I think a lot of lyricists are quite shit and lazy,” Truck Violence frontman Karsyn Henderson tells me. “It’s not their fault that they’re shit and they’re lazy… the culture is shit and lazy.”
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Henderson and guitarist/banjoist Paul Lecours are calling in from the streets of Brixton. Just a few days prior, they released their wildly impressive new album, The weathervane is my body, and, at the time we connect, are in between a two-night stint at the now legendary underground venue The Windmill, where acts like black midi, Black Country, New Road, and others of that scene got their start.
“It’s still super humble,” Lecours says. “[The promoter] Tim was even saying his whole ethos is still to book ‘nobodies,’ because that’s how black midi started. So, respect to them; They haven’t sold out at all.”
It’s hard to say that Truck Violence’s mix of sludge metal, experimental hardcore, and banjo-driven folk sounds all that much like black midi, but as our conversation goes on, it’s easy to understand why the now-defunct British act has their respect, as does The Windmill. It comes down to the core values that lie under the cacophonous tones and guttural shrieks of songs with titles like “My dog would fuck the air:” intentionality, ambition, and — perhaps above all — careful effort.
Henderson and Lecours have been collaborating since they were teens, when the latter moved to their small Alberta town from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born outsiders with self-described angst, the two quickly took to DIY projects like running a local studio or radio station, as well as making as much music together as they could.
“My class was like eight or nine people…. So, if your interests are slightly more niche than what is going on with your couple of buds, then you can become alienated quite quickly,” Henderson recalls. “I wasn’t able to connect in the same way that everyone else was, so I was kinda looking for something. Eventually, Paul moved to my town, and he liked rock music and played guitar… so we teamed up.”
“When we were that young, we were in such a vernal state that as soon as we realized that we could form a bond and grow together, the connection was unseverable,” he continues. “We made music together all the time, like seven days a week, constantly practicing and playing. That’s all we did. We would go to the lake at 5:00 in the morning to write music to see if it would change the way that we wrote. We would go and record samples with overhead microphones of birds singing and things like that, just trying to experiment together, because there was no scene where we were.”
Ambitious from the start, the duo’s experimentation and wide breadth of influences — in music, as well as poetry and literature — led them down several paths, including what they described as an “indie death metal band” and an absurdist hip-hop/noiserap project dubbed ‘no cru5t.’ Eventually, though, their roots in both hardcore and the rural folk tradition caught up with them and, a few years after relocating to Montréal as seventeen-year-olds, synthesized their interests and experiences into Truck Violence. By the 2024 release of their promising debut, simply titled Violence, the two had linked up with bassist Chris Clegg and percussionist Thomas Hart and had ingrained themselves into the city’s scene.
“Funny story; We actually played a show with Angine de Poitrine before they were big at all,” Lecours remembers. “We had no idea who they were. They were in our dressing room, and they got up in their polka-dotted like outfits and stuff. My girlfriend — she was in the dressing room with us — said one of the guys was wearing polka dot underwear, even. So, apparently it goes deep.”
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