The weathervane is my body by Truck Violence: A Review

Truck Violence occupies a unique corner of Montreal's underground scene. Although they are based in Montreal, the band's identity is molded by their rural Albertan roots. After relocating east, Karsyn Henderson and Paul Lecours joined bassist Chris Clegg and drummer Thomas Hart in 2021 to form Truck Violence: a fusion of hardcore punk, noise rock, sludge metal, folk, and bluegrass. That geographic split, Western Canadian countryside versus big-city Montreal, seems to be the band's lifeblood. Their debut album Violence, released in 2024 with Montreal label Mothland, introduced a sound that fused endearing banjo passages with sheets of noise and lyrics wrestling with themes of addiction, abuse, guilt, and the difficulty of leaving home behind. 

Released on June 26th, 2026, their sophomore album, The weathervane is my body, feels less like a reinvention than a sharpening of that identity. Following the band's signing to The Flenser, Truck Violence returns with a record that is heavier, more cohesive, and more assured in the way it lets its opposing influences coexist rather than compete. The production is noticeably refined, without sacrificing any of the band's rawness. Although the album integrates folk and harcore more fluidly than Violence, perhaps, it is still a record defined by tension between opposing forces; between tenderness and brutality, faith and disillusionment, and rural memory and urban anxiety. 

In the epigraph for The weathervane is my body on Bandcamp, Plutarch’s words read: “We learn to speak from people, and to be silent from Gods,” which perfectly describes the album. Like the folk traditions that inspire the band, Henderson’s lyrics are beautifully human, preserving memory and giving voice to pain, while the band’s post-hardcore foundation channels that pain into confrontation. Together, these elements become forms of testimony and ways of refusing silence. Yet, this voice is up against something greater. The “Gods” of this album are systems: capitalism, environmental collapse, inherited trauma, dogma, and decay. Henderson writes as if these forces are beyond negotiation and the songs don't offer any solutions. There are moments where screaming replaces coherent speech, guitars dissolve into walls of distortion, or acoustic passages sit with empty space. Power, violence, and helplessness define both the lyrics and instrumentation of this album. 

To be a weathervane is to exist only in response to forces outside of oneself. Like Plutarch's silence before the gods, the body submits to the wind and the speaker becomes an instrument through which larger social and emotional currents are measured. Referring to the album's cover art, the description on Bandcamp continues to describe a figure perched atop a tiny house, “spine curved, legs pulled in, bare-backed against a skyline that dwarfs everything beneath it. A rural thing dropped into the grit of the city.” It is the album in an image: “naked and defenseless” but all the same “refusing to disappear.” 

“New Jesus” is the obvious centerpiece of the album, arriving like a panic attack. The track erupts immediately into serrated guitars, relentless drumming, and Henderson's voice straining somewhere between a scream and a sermon. The song's anger is aimed outward, towards “a great many things worth loathing/ from far away/ from far away,” carrying a rage that is both political and personal. The song suggests a new saviour for an age that has lost confidence in salvation, yet no replacement ever arrives. Instead, sonic violence communicates exhaustion and disillusionment. Religious imagery here is fractured, and empty. Guitars grind against each other, drums push relentlessly forward, and vocals seem moments away from breaking. 

If "New Jesus" is the record's scream, "House Caught Fire" is its uneasy silence. Stripping away much of the surrounding heaviness, the song returns to Truck Violence's folk influences, allowing acoustic textures to carry the emotional weight. However, rather than offering relief from the album's intensity, the quieter arrangement makes the devastation feel all the more close. Clean guitars and restrained instrumentation create a vulnerability, allowing Henderson's lyrics to sit at the forefront. Evoking memory, home, and loss, this quietness is continued to be felt on “Gerard, be quiet,” where Henderson performs a spoken word-style recollection of riding the school bus which sounds kind of like a voice memo. 

Played in full, the album moves from emotion to confrontation to exhaustion. Beginning with the first howl of “My dog would fuck the air,” and concluding with the fading outline of Henderson's final words: “get washed clean of everything,” this album is heavy. I don't think The weathervane is my body abandons the abrasiveness of Violence, but learns how to wield that abrasiveness differently. The result is a record that feels brutal and vulnerable in equal measure. This album screams, confesses, argues, and mourns, but overall, it refuses to disappear.