They’ve toured with A-listers such as Deep Purple and Slash, but in the early days these Canadian hard rockers paid their way with a T-shirt reading ‘Don’t Fuck With The Truck’. It’s still popular – a testament to the marketability of expletives. And trucks.
Monster Truck’s second album, Sittin’ Heavy, seems poised to sustain the fuzzy, ribcage-thumping rock of debut Furiosity, although it is bluesier in places and beefier across the board.
“We didn’t want to deviate too far from what we’d established,” guitarist Jeremy Widerman explains, “but we did want to show there’s been some evolution.”
Produced by Eric Ratz – and fuelled by “a lot of pot and espresso” – Sittin’ Heavy was recorded in Toronto, North Carolina and their own space in Hamilton, Canada. But upon initial delivery of the record to the label, the band were informed that there weren’t “enough singles”.
“They were basically trying to say there weren’t enough good songs,” Widerman says, laughing. “But after everyone calmed down we just went back at it. We took the weaker songs out, wrote a bunch of new ones… We put ourselves up against the wall. We realised how right the label was,” he says. “It needed to be better. And now it is.”
