There is no shortage of shitbags on Negative Qualities, the ferocious debut album from punk agitators Single Mothers. Popping up over the course of the upcoming release’s 10 take-no-prisoners tracks are a rogues’ gallery of dope-addled liars, liver-abusing drunks, and attention-seeking losers. Admirably, gravel-throated singer Drew Thomson doesn’t exactly take the Fifth where his own behaviour is concerned, a small sampling of his lyrics including admissions such as “I’m a hypocrite and I’m okay with it/I’m so self-aware that it’s ridiculous.”

Judging by Negative Qualities, one might conclude that Single Mothers spend their downtime hanging out in crackhouses and doing cooking-wine shooters in grimy punk clubs. That’s not exactly true, though. Reached in a tour van that’s winding its way through Iowa, bassist Evan Redsky says there’s a decidedly less unsavoury inspiration for many of the band’s songs: the town of London, Ontario.

“From my perspective the lyrics are in many ways a reflection of where we came from—we came from a college town,” Redsky posits. “A really intense college town where you have all kinds of characters. When you’re a young person, there’s a lot to be frustrated or confused or excited about—there’s a lot going on in one place. And I think a lot of the themes on the record stem from that.”

The bassist suggests that the members of Single Mothers are in a pretty good position to comment on the kids in that town.

“When I joined the band, I was one of those people,” he admits. “I think we all were, and proudly. We might have been on the fringe of the college crowd, but we were definitely in that party scene.”

Single Mothers don’t sound much like a band that’s up for a frosh-week frat party on Negative Qualities. What you get is an impressively brutal distillation of black-hearted hardcore, flame-throwing punk, and bare-knuckled rawk ’n’ roll. If you can’t decide who you like more—the Germs, Big Black, or the Murder City Devils—then you’re going to fucking love the savagery.

Redsky notes that getting a full-length completed was something of a struggle. After pressing a seven-inch a half-decade ago, Single Mothers promptly imploded. In the wake of that, Thomson moved to the improbably named Northern Ontario town of Swastika, where he not only became a gold prospector, but also got pretty good at it. During that time the songwriter never ran out of inspiration, telling Pitchfork that his fellow gold-diggers typically were piss-drunk or high on crack.

When Single Mothers reconvened they first worked with the Bronx’s Joby J. Ford, eventually scrapping those sessions and starting over again in Toronto.

“We had a couple cracks at the can—Joby helped us flesh out the songs and get us to a place where we were happy with the energy,” Redsky notes. “He really pointed us in the right direction in terms of songwriting, and it was nice to have that from someone we really respected—the Bronx are a huge influence on each and every one of us.”

Kind of like London, although, from the sound of things, not nearly as scary.

Single Mothers play the Fox Cabaret on Saturday (September 13).