Charleroi  is a musical memoir built around songwriter John Bendik's ( Savage Amused, Cash Registers) rustbelt childhood in the 1970s. The genre bending songs on this record, co-written by guitar player and vocalist Dave Klym and arranged and produced by drummer Matt Ernst and Mike Abiuso, emerge like black soot from a belching smokestack. They tell the tale of lost livelihoods and lost limbs, drug addicts and drug dealers and monkey fights in the woods. They mourn the loss of a culture and find hope in the defiant survival of proud people forgotten by their country.