PISS's 'you made me / skin on linen' Is a Fearless Masterpiece of Purposeful Noise
The Sonic Breakdown
you made me / skin on linen came out October 30 on Sub Pop as SP1753 — fifteen tracks, a shade over thirty minutes, most of them two minutes or shorter. The band is Taylor Zantingh on vocals and lyrics, Tyler Paterson on guitar, Gavin Moya on bass and Garreth Roberts on drums, and the record was cut in January 2025 with Colin Stewart at Hive Creative Labs after roughly two years of playing the material live.
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: The Skinny calls it “a maelstrom of pile-driver guitars and clattering drums,” and the low end is the engine of that — Moya’s bass and Roberts’ drums hold a floor firm enough that the guitar can go anywhere. Beats Per Minute hears the mix moving between “shimmery arpeggios, distortion-drenched chords” and “echoey slowcore segments and cacophonic eruptions.”
The Spatial Dynamics: The sequencing is the real architecture. Interviews with feminist thinkers and community organisers sit between the songs, paired with sound collages and ambient passages, which is why the record can run fifteen tracks without ever feeling like a sprint. The closer, “i keep trying to change the ending,” takes about seven minutes and uses all of them.
Standout Performance
Taylor Zantingh — but as a writer first. She drafted the album as a document, prompts describing each song’s mood and energy, before the band had played a note together. Moya remembers Paterson’s instruction at that first jam: “Bring every pedal you have.” Every texture here grew out of a plan.
Why It’s Certified
⚡ The spoken-word sources are real people, not atmosphere — which is why tracks are titled “andrea I,” “toni,” “vikki” and “manon on the trial of gisèle pelicot.”
🌈 The Line of Best Fit gave it 10/10: “Hope is an uphill battle, but it is there to be found among the rubble of you made me / skin on linen.” Noizze also went 10/10, calling it “an unflinching portrait of unadulterated fury.”
🌈 Northern Transmissions scored it 8.5 and put the case plainly: “Piss does the punk genre justice, and they do it on their own terms.”