When March comes around, everyone is about ready to book their summer tours, looking at what festivals they can cram into the rest of the year. I’m usually screaming into the void about deadlines in addition to the above, but it all came to a grinding halt in March 2020. I was gonna go to Australia that year and live out my Wake in Fright fantasy until I had to live that same nightmare in my Brooklyn apartment, drinking mezcal like there was an embargo and watching YouTube videos of Rose Tattoo instead. That’s kinda like going to Australia, right?

True Body are a band that would have been on the Breakfast Club soundtrack if instead of them all becoming friends, they burned down the school. It’s sexy; it scares the shit out of me because it makes me feel vulnerable; and it rides the line between curiosity and paranoia—like investigating a funny noise in the basement in the middle of the night. And just like the rest of us, True Body had that rug swept out from under them during COVID. “We released our record the day everything in Richmond, Virginia [where the band originated], shut down,” guitarist Hector Castro told me. “I walked into a bar to get a celebratory drink, and they told me to leave. ‘I didn’t wanna go in there anyway,’ I told them!” He’s laughing, but I can hear the pain and reality of that time.

True Body met me at local Brooklyn institution the Anchored Inn after playing a show down the street. I commandeered a table outside to take advantage of the temperature and had a round of shots for the band ready at the table. Of course, Hector and Ysa from True Body walked up to the table with ANOTHER round of shots. I was ready to get the full story of these determined maniacs.

“I dropped out of film school and was working at McDonald’s in Chesapeake, Virginia, when the band started in 2015,” singer Ysa Moreno confessed. “I’m a child with no social skills, so they put me in the drive-through. I was pretty good at slacking off and listening to Clan of Xymox and reading Rozz Williams interviews. I’m pretty sure we were voted the worst McDonald’s in the state at some point. I would just sit around and dream about playing shows, wishing I could be in a band."

Ysa had a solo project called Caverns and saw a post from their future bassist Nate on Craigslist looking for someone—ANYONE—to start a band in the area. Ysa had shown Hector her demos and knew they had something special, linking up with Nate and booking a show in Norfolk, Hector’s hometown, with their respective projects—a chance to meet up and see if it would work. “The set was a fucking mess,” Ysa chuckled. “We couldn’t get through a song—the entire fuckin’ bar was throwing chairs and fighting. If you weren’t a beatdown band, everyone in our town was scared of anything that wasn’t hardcore. But we all looked around the room and were in love with the chaos. It clicked, and we all packed up and moved to Richmond shortly after. ”

For the next five years they worked on music together, with the Bamboo Cafe serving as their makeshift office. “Every important decision we ever made as a band, whether it was meeting management for the first time, deciding songs, or planning tours, it has always been at Bamboo,” Hector told me as he brought another round of shots to our table. “The drinks are apocalyptically strong there; apparently if they like you, the pour count is 1-2-3-4-BAMBOO.’ I’ve been served basically pints of gin there. We met our manager Cooper for the first time there. I had to bring him a special package when he was on tour, so we sat in my car until the sun came up and he was blown away by the record and decided to get to work. ”

That meeting took place in early January 2020, and by the end of the month, the record had been passed around and they were booked to play Roadburn and a handful of Euro dates. Of course, none of that would happen. “Once everything closed it took the wind out of our sails,” said drummer Danny Shyti. “The last booking agent we worked with told me good luck in the DIY scene. Booking agents came consoling, but we told them to fuck off, we were hurt. ”

Tme Body took the misfortune as a challenge to write more, and they decided to lick their wounds and do what most bands had put off in late 2021—a full U.S. tour. Yes, while most of us were getting our lives back together, True Body had already completed an entire continental U.S. tour. Driving through blizzards, playing venues that had just reopened their doors, they set out on their own terms. “We were reckoning on what it meant to be a real band at that time. The landscape of the U.S. was something I had never seen before,” Danny told me. “We would pull up to every city almost messiah-like, almost like a sign of life for people beyond their hometown.”

It’s all perfectly in line with the band’s overall message, which according to Nate was “the more wasteland we traverse, the more people we’ll reach." Ysa concurred and added that “the entire point of this band and that tour was to tap further into reality and not stay away from it. We want to be further into our flesh, and everyone can find themselves even more that way. If there’s a church of True Body, you’re all camped under ecstasy’s flag with us.”

If there is a church of True Body, then I’m a convert, and anyone willing to go the distance to spread their message, I’m here for it. Ysa stood up to get another round and, as if she was at the pulpit, proclaimed, “Everyone that’s generating the reality that you’re experiencing? They’re smarter than you. Get smarter than them!” and then strolled off as if it was punctuated with a mic drop.

Baptize me, I’m in.