Truck Violence is on the rise

Henderson’s lyrics read like the diary scratchings of a misunderstood and frustrated youth. Mostly because that's exactly who he was: Truck Violence – and their 2024 Mothland Records debut Violence – is a snapshot of his early years in Alberta. Those years were hard-worn by the warm, dry summers and desolate, icy winters over an endless horizon. Calling it a "very muddled view of Western Canadiana," it's his twist on the oft-cited idea of Americana further south, "From the viewpoint of practically a teenager." This means it holds its heart on its sleeve in a way that only teen immaturity can offer, "and I love that," he says. "The album is not perfect. My writing isn't perfect. It's bleak. It's sluggishly slow, like slower than you think it should be. And I like that, because that's how it felt back then; it is a bit of a slog, with bright textures in it, because it's not all bad. But it's not all good either, and that's what was so exciting to me."

Violence introduced the thematic through-line of the group as Henderson's therapeutic outpourings. Poetry and the idea of lyric writing came to him from his sister whose adoration of early 00s emo led to the now mid-twenties Henderson's introduction at the tender age of eight. "She had a fascination with the idea of writing poetry, because it was emotions and all shit," he tells me.

With another friend discovering metal titans Slipknot and introducing them to Henderson, it made the formula make sense. "I was like, Well, heavy, edgy music…heavy, edgy poetry," his hands balancing the sum in his head, "And so I kept doing that, until Paul, our current guitarist, moved to our small town from Ontario, and we started making music in high school together."

The introduction of Lecours is where Henderson found solace from the vacancy surrounding him ("I had one house that was maybe 20 minutes out of town, and the other one was a farm, maybe an hour or so without cell service…what I'm getting at is that there wasn't a lot to do,") and the natural inclination to explore this heavy outlet took hold.

Forming their first death metal band, getting to grips with heavy music and the culture surrounding it at a young age didn't involve the depth that usually accompanies its creation. The superficiality of needing to express something inexpressible was enough. Most importantly, though, "itt was a way to feel like you're in this niche community that nobody understands."

Deciding there was no future for them in Alberta, they moved over 2000 miles away to Montréal to find a wider community. As with most things, for Truck Violence, it was in the name of processing something deeper. "In a lot of ways, it was a response to the lack of opportunity that my family had," he tells me. "My dad has never even left Alberta before. He grew up on a native reserve in Alberta, and moved an hour away from that and stayed there his entire life. My mom has stayed in this small town her entire life as well." With no surrounding people following whims, Henderson took it upon himself. "Making music is in a lot of ways a very stupid decision," he explains, so he knew he had to throw himself headfirst into it "because they couldn't."

The initial steps in Montréal were slow. With the pair's taste for heavy music waning and nowhere to jam, they decided to pivot. Embarking on making "weird, hyper internet hip-hop" as NoCru5t, this allowed them to hone their craft, figure themselves out while tending to multiple musical threads. Deciding this wasn't the right fit for them, they stepped back into their heavy music zone. Claiming it to be the "authentic" versions of themselves, following this gut feeling, they started putting together a rhythm section. Getting in contact with bassist Chris Clegg under the proviso that "we knew he practised," in 2021, they then recruited drummer Ryley Kilma (who left post-Violence, replaced by Thomas Hart).

Dynamics are a key element of the Truck Violence formula. As Henderson and co grew older, they became disenfranchised with heavy music. Explaining that, by its extreme nature, "your dial is set to 100% all the time," the emotional cadence is drowned out. Enthusing that "music is all about dynamics", Henderson explains the group's own as follows: "Paul brings his practicality to music, and I think I bring a certain loftiness and headroom, and so does Chris in his way. And Thomas, we're still discovering, brings his own flavour as well. We all do different things, but to me, that's golden. You want that perfect mix of doing different things, but close enough that you can work together, and put up with each other."

With Violence being their debut offering (and scoring an 8.0 on Pitchfork) the idea of it being held in esteem as a marker of both their potential and their journey so far should be quite prominent. But, as Henderson goes on to explain, it's an album that's gifted them more than they believe it should have. "I thought it was quite mediocre," he tells me. "When we were writing it, a lot of people in the band thought it sucked too, like Ryley quit two times because he didn't believe in the album."

Comparing it to "stretching your legs for the first time," it was their first instance of recording and writing heavy music since those teenage days back in Alberta. A band figuring it out on the fly, it’s their most authentic selves, because they didn't have the scope to plan or plot. "I'm eternally grateful that people liked it, because I remember listening to the final cuts, and I was like, you know, I'm proud of us. I know this isn't great yet, but I was certainly proud. There was no broader intention to subvert anything. It was just, let's see if we can actually make music."

You could be forgiven for thinking Truck Violence want to invert the world. Clawing at hardcore, metal, folk, and any other musical limb they want to attach to their Franken-genre, with Henderson's studiously, almost-Londoner-erring, vocal thundering, subverting would be the order of the day. Their place in the musical landscape writ large is based around righteously rising above the rising tides of mediocrity, "Especially with Tiktok, there's a lot of Tiktok slop-fuck, shitty bands in every city, and they're just as annoying and embarrassing to watch from a distance and up close as they are anywhere else," he deadpans. "I'm extra glad to be doing what I'm doing today, because there needs to be less of that and more earnestly bad music,” he implores. “I want people to fuck up more. Try your hardest and put the work in, but it's okay to be bad, so long as it's a true badness."

Finding their space in the Montréal scene has been hard won. By design, Truck Violence does not appease – which makes Henderson's current opinion on what's going on a bit antagonistic to their cause. "Let me think about how I put this," he breaks earnestly. "Um, there is a desire right now to make yourself known by sort of alluding to a body of work which already exists…You'll have people that are like, I'm a punk band, I'm a thrash band…like you can go to my show without having heard my music and know exactly what you're gonna get. There's a lot of that that exists within the scene, and existed within the scene when we first came here, and we didn't do that. I don't think that we fit in with that."

Carving out their own space while not fitting into the hardcore or punk bills came down to the keyword that runs throughout Truck Violence – authenticity: "If you're authentic, and you are earnest, then people will look at that and say, Okay, there's something…like a conversation happening that I'm not getting with less earnest music."

There's a new sense of earnestness in Montréal since Truck Violence waded into the waters and forcefully made waves. The fact they're so dogged and determined, and yet a frightfully different offering than most from their adopted home city, is why the quartet are heading to the UK for this year's Québec Spring alongside a host of other Canadian talents. "And so what is our place within the scene? Well, I think it's just being honest and having a conversation with people through our music," Henderson says. "And now there are bands in the scene who are doing the same thing, which makes me quite happy. The Montréal scene is a beautiful place, and I'm happy for it. That's not to say that there aren't issues. There's a fuck tonne of issues," he cackles.

Truck Violence aren’t here to fix anything but only to serve their innate musical desires and whatever cacophonous glory that entails. Without being ruthlessly ambitious, they remain driven: “I've been competitive in unhealthy ways," Henderson smirks. "Anybody within the arts with an ego, will tell you that they've hated somebody's guts for no reason, for the sake of competition – and in some ways, that can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. You have to be competitive. You have to want to do something great."