Content warning: discussion of sexual assault
Vancouver punk four-piece PISS had caught the attention of many with their visceral live show, an eruption of noise-rock interspersed with spoken word and sound collages. A set straying away from convention, assembling a narrative deeply tied to vocalist and lyricist Taylor Zantingh’s lived experience. With ‘you made me / skin on linen’, the band transfers the brutality of their live performance to 15 recorded tracks that construct a debut album. The songs confront the impact of gender-based violence and the ongoing trauma of sexual assault. This makes the record anything but an easy listen: it’s crushing and abrasive without any dilution of reality. That’s also why it’s more necessary than ever, existing in the context of our culture where violence against women has been the norm for far too long.
Children’s voices and laughter are heard on the opening ‘kai and friends’. It feels like a hazy dream. They each list what they want to be when they grow up, situating childhood innocence as a starting point. This is disrupted by the heavy, violent instrumentation of ‘i wanted to be a singer’ as Zantingh narrates the premature loss of this innocence. It’s a direct address to the listener: “I don’t know if writing about violence is helping me / Am I helping you?” The track descends into the distressing screams of someone fighting urgently to make herself heard. Guitarist Tyler Paterson, bassist Gavin Moya and drummer Garreth Roberts score the narrative arc Zantingh is releasing, an intense wall of sound that builds with the frontwoman’s desperate vocals. This is a future that has been ripped from her: “I wanted to write romance novels / Now I need perfect control over my victim narrative”.
‘time loop at hot slit’ details the experience of violent misogyny and girlhood sexualisation. The noise-punk track is harrowing but danceable, exposing the rotten core of a patriarchal culture that coerces and desensitizes bodily violation. “I was ten years old and learning blow jobs on a gluestick” is an unflinching opening lyric that might offend many, but that’s what punk is supposed to do. It doesn't dilute the truth: it’s raw, unfiltered, and challenges established norms of what is acceptable. The album’s sample interludes provide broader context for these political conversations about systemic violence, using interview extracts from feminist writers, activists, and philosophers. Feminist militant and writer Andrea Dworkin talks about pornography and violent retaliation in response to the law failing women. Novelist Toni Morrison discusses grace. Clinical supervisor and activist Vikki Reynolds talks about a path to liberation amidst a rape culture that impacts men and women. The added perspectives show resistance is possible. These voices never feel separate from the music of PISS; they perfectly frame the story that is being told.
‘blocking a scene you can’t remember’ slows down the record to a softer sound. Zantingh performs her lyrics like a stage play: “Interior, a girl’s bedroom, nighttime”. The testimony of assault and bodily violation is transformed into macabre imagery: “Teeth stitched into the back of my lips / And fingers sewn in the wrong places”. The abject horror of her trauma is devastatingly present as she struggles to finish each thought, repeatedly interrupting herself with “cut, again”. The softer spoken word collapses into gut-wrenching yells and jagged guitars. On the closing track, Zantingh insists in hushed delivery, “I won’t bleed forever”.
This album will connect differently with each person who listens to it; that’s where its power lies. It’s an unraveling of trauma with undiluted fury and desperation. ‘you made me/ skin on linen’ is a work that doesn’t exist without the suffering of Taylor Zantingh, and it won’t resonate with so many without the ongoing pervasive problem of sexual violence against women. In a time when institutions still fail female sexual assault survivors and protect male perpetrators, rape jokes are still told, femicide rates keep growing, and discomfort and danger are an expected part of everyday life for women and girls, this record is an urgent retaliation. It’s a piece of music that has never been more important.
Natasha Clough
Image: ‘you made me / skin on linen’ Official Album Cover
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