“The one thing I'm starting to embrace more with our show is just the volatility of it all, and that literally the whole thing could collapse,” said Graham Walsh over the phone of his band, Holy Fuck's live performance. Walsh plays in the controversially-named group alongside Matt McQuaid, Matt Schulz and Brian Borcherdt, a rare electronic instrumental quartet that specializes in the use of analogue gear to create danceable yet distinctively ambient music.

“I like the idea that it could crumble and we bring it back together, then the music we make starts to get really blurry and messy and then all of a sudden it's laser tight at a moment's notice ... We can't easily create that with (pre-mixed audio) stems and computers.”

The live element of Holy Fuck's music is certainly a focal point of the group, and they'll be exhibiting that later this month on September 27 at the London Music Hall. It's an intricate setup of McQuaid and Schulz covering the rhythm section while Borcherdt and Walsh tinker away on a series of keyboards, effect pedals and miscellaneous analogue gear (including a vintage Moviola, traditionally used to edit film).

“There's fun in finding a piece of equipment that maybe wasn't even made to make music ... It gives us a little bit of a different sonic coloration … because of the gear we use and the way we put it together.”

And though there are certain challenges to using garage-sale equipment (“The gear that we're playing, a lot of it is pretty remedial and delicate and not meant for touring”), the Toronto-hailing group are notorious for their live shows, which can be described as an energetic, beerfueled cacophony of electronic sound with real drums and bass.

Since the band's inception in 2005, Holy Fuck has toured hundreds of cities internationally, including performances at festivals like 2008's London Ontario Live Arts festival (which they co-headlined) and South By South West, at which the stage was rushed by hundreds of screaming fans. Their success has been impressive considering Holy Fuck doesn't even have a lead singer.

While some might consider that a hindrance, the lack of focal point, according to Walsh has actually created a more diverse palette through which the band constructs music.

“It changes the framing of the song a lot, and it's a lot more difficult to keep something engaging, but … I think we can do it, just by changing the instruments and the way we create our wall of noise and stuff like that … To us, the voice is just a different instrument and when you remove that out of the equation it sort of leaves room for other instruments to take centre stage and fill that role.”

Additionally, the band members all come from songwriting backgrounds (Walsh himself is a former jingle writer), so the lack of a lead singer has also created a greater degree of improvisational opportunity within each performance.

“(Holy Fuck) started out of naivety, going up with no pressure and no expectations and no one knew who we were. We were just four buddies getting up on stage and fucking around and making crazy noise. That was sort of a jumping off point and then literally, through five years of touring constantly (we've been) honing it and figuring things out and adding new things and morphing it along the way,” Walsh explained.

It wasn't long after those first concerts that people were flocking to see this new, experimental band, one so edgy to even include an expletive in its name. In fact, it was the name itself that gave the band a great push-start of publicity, as they appeared on blogs and in indie magazines across North America. They were even cited in 2008 by Stephen Harper's Conservatives as one of the reasons funding for arts group PromArt (which gave Holy Fuck $3,000 in touring support) was pulled.

Even in spite of the band's overnight buzz, Holy Fuck have proven their lasting ability through five years of writing, recording and performance, resulting in three full-length records, their latest being 2010's much-praised Latin. While some still deem the band's name to be unprintable, an interesting effect has taken place, in which Holy Fuck's name can now be spoken with a degree of casualness.

“I mean, it's hard for us to see the forest for the trees because we're inside this thing, and we're just surrounded by it 24/7,” Walsh said, “But ... it is kind of interesting, and it has occurred to me that there has been a bit of a desensitization which I think is really hilarious because if you look back at how much trouble the Barenaked Ladies got in (for their name), that's nothing! So maybe there's this little part of me that feels proud because we're blazing the way.”

So whether they're the new Barenaked Ladies or not, Holy Fuck are an indie-electronica group worth checking out. Catch them September 27 at the London Music Hall. Tickets are $25.25 through Ticketmaster.