The Truckers
Get Rich Or Drive Trying
6.3
Quebec’s The Truckers are an odd bunch. Offering a brand of technical grind-cum-metalcore, the 50 Cent-inspired Get Rich or Drive Trying is half delivered in French, though all the song titles are in English. But rather than use their native language in an endearing, comical manner like the France-rooted Wormfood, this sextet utilize it to the extent that it becomes divisive as evidenced in midpoint tune “No Man’s Land” and elsewhere. Aside from that minor complaint, The Truckers can be deemed promising within reason, but Galy has also released superior efforts from bands like Beneath the Massacre, Despised Icon, Martyr, Neuraxis, Unexpect, and several others – all of which should take precedence over a polarizing album such as this.
In line with the grind M.O. of lacing songs with soundclips, “Redneck + Ultra,” “Truckspiracy,” and “Rimouski-Dallas” each brandish a clip before, or after, jumping into technically-inclined, dissonant passages. While a large portion of Get Rich or Drive Trying is classifiable as a blend of grindcore, metalcore, deathcore, what have you, the gang shouts in “Redneck + Ultra” reminds one of hardcore. In other words, The Truckers are a concoction of various -cores, and that alone makes for a varied yet strangely unsatisfying mixture. Lending credence to said claim is the fact that there are many vocal styles – spoken word, clean shouting, screaming, screeching, growling – which further blur the subgenre boundaries. Instrumentally speaking, this 10-track full-length partially consists of numerous enjoyable sections as in the low-key part of “Redneck + Ultra,” the chugging of “On the Road Again,” the grooving of “Speed,” and more, but ultimately doesn’t meet, or much less rise above, the bar the label has set for itself.
When all is said and done, Get Rich or Drive Trying is an okay, if inessential, debut from young upstarts. For shits and giggles, someone should introduce them to Jim Goad’s and Jim Blanchard’s Trucker Fags in Denial comic strip, and see if they mention it on the next album.
