dr41n99x67859
New member
- Notes
- ♬56
I first heard of this album while looking at the 2026 lineup for Outbreak Fest in Manchester, a festival I attend every year. The name of the band was the first thing that appealed to me, and then the cover of this project.
On my first listen, the first thing I noticed was that this is more than just Hardcore; this was a complex melding of Hardcore, Sludge Metal, Folk and Noise Rock. And of course, a long emotional trek, with no real resolution, but no anticlimax.
Sound:
From the very first second of the album is, as the title suggests, very violent. The intro track "Undressed you layn't before" begins with a cluster of metallic disorganised guitars and a tempo so high it nearly lacks it. It then abruptly fades into a slow-paced melancholic semi-post-hardcore, semi-folk riff.
The sonic motifs of deep rural banjo riffs and unforgiving breakdowns and interludes only add to the definite intentional feeling of the uncertainty of grief, addiction, rural life and heartbreak.
Themes:
The opening lyrics, performed by vocalist Karsyn Henderson, read "Tell me, tell me that I'm good enough. That I'm not too far gone. That I'm interesting." Handing us an introduction to a major theme across the track and the entire album: self-doubt, shame and insecurity. The track also closes with a monologue of devastating catharsis in which the vocalist speaks on his desire and life goal to be written about, and the doubt that he's interesting enough to achieve this goal. He also touches on his desire to just be thought about, which, to me, is a devastatingly relatable feeling.
Another theme that is very prominent throughout the project is addiction; the most obvious uses of these themes are in the titles, tracks like "Drunk to death" and "He ended the bender hanging" are unforgiving reality checks of widespread and isolated cases of addiction. These themes are also presented lyrically. In the third track of the album, "Guns buried in the front yard", the lyric "Set down the bottle and show me something" shows the dismal reality of being in a relationship that has been stained by alcoholism.
In the track "Along the ditch till town" the painfully poetic lyric "Drunk driving an ATV as sun's rounding and I'll be strangled with skip rope" highlights just how destructive addiction has been in the writer's life, with skip rope being used as a symbolic reminder of the innocence that is lost in addiction and how the reminder of what you once were can metaphorically choke you.
Brief mentions of sexual abuse in the following paragraph
The final theme I'll touch on (there are more themes present in the album but I won't go into all of them in this review) is sex. In the track "Lecture", the writer touches on sexual repression and shame, shown in the lyrics, "I did exactly what I wanted to. But the words, no I'm far too a coward to say". To me, these lyrics are a representation of the stigmatisation of sex (potentially even same-sex relationships) in rural communities, especially religious rural communities, and how this stigmatisation can destroy a person's perception of sex and completely repress them. Another lyric that stood out to me is one of the last lyrics of the album in the closing track "Along the ditch till town"; it reads "It's your fault I hadn't a choice, I was just a kid". I possess absolutely no liberty to speak on this lyric from an objective standpoint, but to me, this lyric seems to be hinting at sexual abuse in childhood, which to me is backed by the previous lyric "So run, run away. Run if ever a choice in the leave".
Summary:
In conclusion, this album is what I was missing, what I thought the Hardcore scene was missing and what I think modern lyricism is missing. It is a poetically driven anti-therapy session, where everything is vomited out with no clear goal but being heard.
Everything about this album feels raw, and though that word is overused in music discourse, I can't think of a word that could describe it better. This is the skeleton of what I hope to be more incredible work by Truck Violence, which is already being proven in their newest LP released this year: "The weathervane is my body" (which I will be reviewing soon). I can see this album seeding a new sound in Hardcore, somehow more vulnerable and more messy than the current state of the scene.
Seeing a few of the songs from this album live also reinforced my belief that this is more of an emotional telling than anything else, seeing what I think were tears from Henderson at multiple points of the set.
I love what this album is, and that is a Canadian folktale of a broken person and his broken acquaintances and their journey which never concludes itself, but is self admittedly finite.
9.6/10
Incredible debut performance.
Track rankings:
1. Drunk to death
2. He ended the bender hanging
3. Guns buried in the front yard
4. I bore you now bear for me
5. Along the ditch till town
6. Undressed you layn't before
7. The gash
8: Lecture
On my first listen, the first thing I noticed was that this is more than just Hardcore; this was a complex melding of Hardcore, Sludge Metal, Folk and Noise Rock. And of course, a long emotional trek, with no real resolution, but no anticlimax.
Sound:
From the very first second of the album is, as the title suggests, very violent. The intro track "Undressed you layn't before" begins with a cluster of metallic disorganised guitars and a tempo so high it nearly lacks it. It then abruptly fades into a slow-paced melancholic semi-post-hardcore, semi-folk riff.
The sonic motifs of deep rural banjo riffs and unforgiving breakdowns and interludes only add to the definite intentional feeling of the uncertainty of grief, addiction, rural life and heartbreak.
Themes:
The opening lyrics, performed by vocalist Karsyn Henderson, read "Tell me, tell me that I'm good enough. That I'm not too far gone. That I'm interesting." Handing us an introduction to a major theme across the track and the entire album: self-doubt, shame and insecurity. The track also closes with a monologue of devastating catharsis in which the vocalist speaks on his desire and life goal to be written about, and the doubt that he's interesting enough to achieve this goal. He also touches on his desire to just be thought about, which, to me, is a devastatingly relatable feeling.
Another theme that is very prominent throughout the project is addiction; the most obvious uses of these themes are in the titles, tracks like "Drunk to death" and "He ended the bender hanging" are unforgiving reality checks of widespread and isolated cases of addiction. These themes are also presented lyrically. In the third track of the album, "Guns buried in the front yard", the lyric "Set down the bottle and show me something" shows the dismal reality of being in a relationship that has been stained by alcoholism.
In the track "Along the ditch till town" the painfully poetic lyric "Drunk driving an ATV as sun's rounding and I'll be strangled with skip rope" highlights just how destructive addiction has been in the writer's life, with skip rope being used as a symbolic reminder of the innocence that is lost in addiction and how the reminder of what you once were can metaphorically choke you.
Brief mentions of sexual abuse in the following paragraph
The final theme I'll touch on (there are more themes present in the album but I won't go into all of them in this review) is sex. In the track "Lecture", the writer touches on sexual repression and shame, shown in the lyrics, "I did exactly what I wanted to. But the words, no I'm far too a coward to say". To me, these lyrics are a representation of the stigmatisation of sex (potentially even same-sex relationships) in rural communities, especially religious rural communities, and how this stigmatisation can destroy a person's perception of sex and completely repress them. Another lyric that stood out to me is one of the last lyrics of the album in the closing track "Along the ditch till town"; it reads "It's your fault I hadn't a choice, I was just a kid". I possess absolutely no liberty to speak on this lyric from an objective standpoint, but to me, this lyric seems to be hinting at sexual abuse in childhood, which to me is backed by the previous lyric "So run, run away. Run if ever a choice in the leave".
Summary:
In conclusion, this album is what I was missing, what I thought the Hardcore scene was missing and what I think modern lyricism is missing. It is a poetically driven anti-therapy session, where everything is vomited out with no clear goal but being heard.
Everything about this album feels raw, and though that word is overused in music discourse, I can't think of a word that could describe it better. This is the skeleton of what I hope to be more incredible work by Truck Violence, which is already being proven in their newest LP released this year: "The weathervane is my body" (which I will be reviewing soon). I can see this album seeding a new sound in Hardcore, somehow more vulnerable and more messy than the current state of the scene.
Seeing a few of the songs from this album live also reinforced my belief that this is more of an emotional telling than anything else, seeing what I think were tears from Henderson at multiple points of the set.
I love what this album is, and that is a Canadian folktale of a broken person and his broken acquaintances and their journey which never concludes itself, but is self admittedly finite.
9.6/10
Incredible debut performance.
Track rankings:
1. Drunk to death
2. He ended the bender hanging
3. Guns buried in the front yard
4. I bore you now bear for me
5. Along the ditch till town
6. Undressed you layn't before
7. The gash
8: Lecture