Hear King Garbage Make Trucking Sound Sexy on ‘Monster Truck’

King Garbage turn trucking into a moody, melodramatic piano rocker on “Monster Truck,” a track from their upcoming album, Heavy Metal Greasy Love.

“My baby drives a monster truck,” the duo sings together over pounding piano chords. “Too much is never enough/No fast cars or diamond rings, only heavy-metal, greasy things.” Over the course of five minutes, the song becomes a long-haul journey of its own with soulful horns, some funky Wurlitzer, postmodern echoes, and a noise-rock freakout flying by faster than white lines in the middle of blacktop.

King Garbage is the brainchild of songwriters Zach Cooper and Vic Dimotsis, whose worked with the likes of Leon Bridges and Jon Batiste. Outside of King Garbage, Cooper and Dimotsis are a songwriting/producing partnership that has worked on tunes for SZA, Ellie Goulding, and Billy Porter. Their work on Batiste’s “Sing” earned them eight Grammy nominations.

The duo released their debut as King Garbage, Make It Sweat, in 2017, garnering praise from Faith No More frontman and Ipecac Records co-owner Mike Patton. “This is comfort food for nasty people,” he said of Make It Sweat. Heavy Metal Greasy Love will come out on his label April 1.

Cooper describes “Monster Truck” as “somewhere between musical theater and classic rock,” while Dimotsis offers some more vivid language. “This song is less ‘sea salt’ and more ‘salt of the earth,’” he said in a statement. “It makes more sense 100 miles outside of any major city and may be one of the few songs ever written to use ‘truck nuts’ in the chorus. Truck nuts glisten off the back bumper, swinging low with challenging and poetic weight. In the American South, a truck is not just a truck, but an idea. Curiosity shakes its leathery wings in this Joel/Seger/Springsteen high-test musical-theater redline onesie, with stars down the sleeves, ‘blow your tail feathers off’–type alpha Stevie Nicks with no intent on ever returning from said pyrotechnics.”

King Garbage previously released two other songs from Heavy Metal Greasy Love, the similarly soulful “Busy on a Saturday Night” and “Peanut Butter Kisses.”

Heavy Metal Greasy Love track list:

1. “Checkmate”
2. “Let ‘Em Talk”
3. “I Miss Mistakes”
4. “Snow”
5. “Busy On A Saturday Night”
6. “Monster Truck”
7. “Never Die”
8. “Piper”
9. “Peanut Butter Kisses”

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Zach Cooper in King Garbage was also the bass player for Coheed and Cambria; King Garbage features a different Zach Cooper.