One of the most extraordinary album releases of the year, but not for the faint-hearted.
Some bands take a lifetime to make an impression, others barrel up and kick the door in from the get go. Vancouver based band PISS, circling the same poetry mixed with hardcore Canadian scene as RIL favourites Truck Violence, have turned a trauma filled journey into an instant classic of a debut album. This joins a string of excellent recent brutalist modern albums including Truck Violence’s 2024 debut Violence, Benefit’s 2023 punk-rage extremism Nails and Ethel Cain’s 2025 waking nightmare Perverts. It was picked up by legendary label Sub Pop and you don’t catch their eye without some serious talent.
PISS is Taylor Zantingh (vocals), Tyler Paterson (guitar), Gavin Moya (bass), and Garreth Roberts (drums). The band is a multi-disciplinary art project combining punk, hardcore, poetry, sound collage, performance art, and visual art. you made me / skin on linen is built out of Zantingh’s personal traumas and experiences of sexual violence. Whilst now removed from those experiences and thirty years of age, Zantingh is still processing it all and this album is very much the response to that.
A lot of the album is not music, it is snatches of thoughts and feelings on the area of sexual violence, pornography, rape and uncontrolled male aggression. Feminist writers like Andrea Dworkin and Toni Morrison provide snatches of commentary. In between this are tracks that explode like volcanic eruptions. ‘i wanted to be a singer’ launches us straight into the heart of it all:
“I don’t know if writing about violence is helping me
Am I helping you?
I keep trying to make-
I keep trying to make my-
I keep trying to make my pain mean something
I spent my life trying to turn my pain into something useful
I spent my life trying to turn my pain into something beautiful
I wanted to write romance novels
Now, I need perfect control over my victim narrative”
It is a powerful mix of hardcore, punk rock, screamo and more put into a very powerful blender.
Where does a band go after a debut album like this? It seems unthinkable, unhealthy even that they could carry on with this level of raw exposure night after night, for year after year. Wherever they go, however they manifest, this album will always exist, a powerful, devastating document of raw trauma induced rage turned into something absolutely profound. This is not an album to enjoy, it is an album to experience, to make you think.
Essential Tracks: Separating out tracks here serves no function, this is to be experienced as an entire 30 minute 30 second album in its entirety.
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