The cover of Spite House’s sophomore full-length, Desertion, is a piece of visual art that was constructed, then destroyed, then re-constructed and destroyed several times over. Its final form is just as dependent on the carnage it is the restoration. This deeply deliberate image was created to present 11 songs that wouldn’t be possible without immense pain or hard-earned growth. Desertion is post-hardcore at its most visceral and moving, a concept album that explores loss so vulnerably and unsparingly that it’s sure to inspire catharsis and stage dives in equal measure.

Spite House itself wouldn’t exist without loss. The Montreal-based band was started by vocalist/guitarist Max Lajoie shortly after losing his mother to cancer in 2019. Driven by an intense desire to take control of his life and not waste any more time, Lajoie joined up with longtime friend and drummer Marc Tremblay to start Spite House; the lineup was eventually rounded out by bassist Nabil Ortega and the trio released their self-titled debut album in 2022. Many would hear the fiery emo of that album and imagine there must be some therapeutic release in the music, but when it came time to write Desertion, Lajoie knew he had to go back even further and to delve even deeper. “When I was 17, my dad passed away from suicide,” he explains. “Then ten years later my mom called me to tell me she had cancer, and ten days later she passed. The first Spite House record is more about this wake up call and realizing you need to do what you want in life but Desertion is more about how these tragedies have informed so much of my life–it’s about trying to look them in the eye and reassess them as an adult. I want to move past them but I also want to take some kind of lesson from them.”

When it came to approaching such painful and challenging subject matter, Lajoie didn’t want to hold back lyrically or musically. “There’s nothing happy about these songs,” he says, “they’re about trying to relive these tragic experiences so that I can try to not let them define me–so the sonics really needed to match that. I didn’t want to worry about songs sounding too dark or too aggressive.” Every note of Desertion is meticulously crafted with this aim in mind, and Lajoie’s skills as a producer and engineer meant the only limits to his vision were his own imagination–and patience. “I’m a control freak, so it’s reassuring that I can do as many takes as I want and have unlimited time with it, but it can be another layer of self doubt,” he says. “But overall it’s a positive because there’s no one that cares more about any of it than me.” The result is an explosive 29 minutes of heartrending punk that meets the stakes of Lajoie’s truly affecting story, and brings to mind ‘90s greats like Seaweed, Knapsack, or Dear You-era Jawbreaker–all with the urgency of the modern hardcore scene that incubated Spite House.

Desertion opens with “Ashen Grey,” a sub-two minute cut of distortion-drenched post-hardcore that explicitly introduces the album’s themes in Lajoie’s attempt to reevaluate the most traumatic moments of his life. “It’s about feeling stalled out in life, growing up but not growing,” he explains. “I realized I had to get past the sort of underlying guilt and depression that I was always carrying.” From there the album is pointedly sequenced, taking the listener chronologically through the most agonizing milestones in Lajoie’s life. “Deafening Calls” recounts being pulled out of class in high school to receive the news that his father had passed, and “Desert” picks up in the immediate aftermath, returning to his now deserted home to gather his things and move out immediately. On the melodic reprieve “Tied To The Flow,” Lajoie recounts leaving his hometown outside of Ottawa, and the people who helped him begin to move forward. “It’s about leaving the city, moving to Montreal,” he says. “Growing up with so many challenges in my family, it made me the kind of person who doesn’t trust anyone other than myself. I really grew up just being self reliant. That song is about realizing I can’t be like that, I need to find help and find a way to trust people.”

The album then fast forwards nearly a decade to “Ten Days”, which recounts when Lajoie–having begun his new life in Montreal–received another fateful phone call. “Because of the problems in my mom’s life, I’d kind of had to make the choice to detach from her,” he explains. “So when I got the call that she was dying, I felt so much guilt and regret that I hadn’t had as much time with my mom. It was just this feeling of there’s only ten days and we need to talk about everything. And we did–that was one of the lucky things about it, we just said everything that you don’t usually say if you think you have more time. But in the end it just wasn’t enough.”

While Lajoie’s lyrics are autobiographical and highly specific to his life, it’s a testament to his writing approach and the band’s energetic delivery that Spite House’s music always feels welcoming and universal. “For me, the band and this album are really about being open about these painful things that happened,” Lajoie explains. “If I was still in that place at those times, and I heard a record like this, I would really connect to that and feel like I wasn’t alone. The album was built to address everything that happened in a very specific way, but I also don’t want it to just be about me. The themes of the record are about things specific to me, but they can be applied to a lot of different things and I want people to be able to get their own meanings from it.” Tracks like “Down The Drain” or “Midway” could just as easily be about anyone’s hardships, self doubts, and anxieties–the need to overcome the external and internal pressures, to find a healthier relationship with control or lack thereof.

As a whole, it’s Lajoie’s unflinching willingness to put himself into the songs that imbues them with such moving and palpable honesty. On late album standout “Coma Dream,” he finds some heartbreaking clarity. “I’ve had this recurring dream where my dad is still alive and asking me for help,” he says. “I wake up with all of this guilt and it’s sort of a reminder that all of this will always be with me. The tragedy is always coming back and so are the lessons you learned from it.” The track then segues into album closer “Safe Haven” where Lajoie sings “Will I ever heal completely?” and as the final notes ring out a lilting drum roll stops abruptly like a question no one can answer.