Few bands, if any, have stoked more fervour in Vancouver over the last year than PISS. From the moment they debuted at long-running underground arts hub Red Gate in April of 2024, they rapidly established a reputation as a must-see live experience with searing, emotional pressure cooker shows.

Amid the twisting, piercing, scraping riffage and wreckage of guitarist Tyler Paterson, bassist Gavin Moya, and drummer Garreth Roberts, vocalist Taylor Zantingh calls out sexual and gender-based violence through disarming screams, howls, and shrieks punctuated by equally arresting spoken word passages. Together, the quartet conjures artful noise informed by an array of disciplines and thinkers, among them film, painting, sound collage, literature, anarcho-feminists, philosophers, and psychoanalysts.

PISS’s chemistry has been clear since their first practice. Zantingh has played in punk bands since she was 15, but she’s never locked in with bandmates like she has with PISS. “Me saying this is the first time I’ve been in a really good place of alignment with creative partners is a lot less because of the people that I worked with in the past not being a good fit and more of me not really understanding or respecting myself and my own ideas.”

Zantingh’s newfound confidence and the band members’ instant spark made for an unforgettable live debut. It was the first time Paterson, Moya, and Roberts saw her enact her entire performance, and she galvanized everyone in the room, her bandmates included. “It just exceeded any expectations,” Paterson recalls. “I remember driving home after that show with the biggest smile on my face being like, ‘That was incredible.’”

Zantingh even surprised herself. Despite her wide-ranging creative interests, she never thought of her physical expression of PISS’s music as performance art. “Other people saying that to me is what made me lean into it and think more critically about it.” She’s since taken it upon herself to study performance art giants like Lydia Lunch. This is me recognizing that this is something that people are seeing in me and then trying to go about it responsibly by reading books and doing a bit of research.”

This reciprocal flow of ideas and inspiration exemplifies the fundamental importance of community to PISS. But the band understands that community is a complicated, fractious concept. Whether it’s a chosen community or the broader community that is a person’s environment, there are no clear-cut answers about how to get along with everyone and make coexistence work.

“Everybody makes this abstract thing that’s community,” Zantingh says. “Community-building involves so much of a loss of control, like an exercise in letting go of control and accepting others for who they are,” even when “the things that you have to accept are very difficult.”

On the other hand, Paterson notes, “For us kind of coming out of nowhere and having such an accommodating and warm welcoming community of local musicians and artists really makes us feel accepted. And helping us get all of these initial shows that really set us on our way was amazing for us. On that side of things, it’s been really reassuring.”

“It’s easy to get hung up on things that aren’t working, because it’s just natural for us to fixate on the things that need to be fixed,” Zantingh responds, “but there are a lot of good things in our local community. I just sometimes have a hard time remembering that, so thank you.”

Zantingh and Paterson’s exchange puts PISS’s nurturing band dynamic on display. “I am definitely a person who tends toward worrying or being critical, self-critical, and critical of others,” she admits, “and all three of the boys are very grounded and gentle and patient and do a really good job in their own individual ways of bringing me back to a place of, ‘Okay, well, that’s valid how you feel, but is it necessarily realistic, or is it helpful for you to be in that space?’”

Mutual care is vital to a healthy community, and PISS devote themselves to creating supportive, accessible spaces. “I do spend a lot of time thinking about how to make people feel more empowered and more comfortable in spaces that I am in a position of power in,” Zantingh says.

Before PISS’s sets, Zantingh provides a trigger warning about the band’s lyrical themes and points out the exits for those who might need a breather. She lets the audience know where to find free resources in the venue, including earplugs and, whenever possible, naloxone. She’s aware that these actions seem inconsequential to some, but she remains committed to community safety. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that that work is not important, because it does create an atmosphere of like, ‘This what is possible in our spaces.’”

Community care goes both ways between Zantingh and the band’s audiences. When she performs, “It’s a really intense, emotional place to be in, in my body and in my head,” she discloses. When PISS begin packing up their gear, she’s immediately thrust into conversations with “somebody who’s crying, and then the next person I’m talking to is really drunk.” But when audiences check in on her among the barrage of emotionally heavy interactions, they remind her that she’s more than a service provider—she’s a human being.

“That’s when I can ground myself and be like, ‘This is a person who sees me as a person.’ I’m really, really grateful that those types of people come to the shows and care for me in that way. I feel most connected to an audience member when somebody asks me if I’m okay, when somebody checks in with me before revealing things,” Zantingh says. “A lot of times, the social role I put myself in with this band is so, so taxing and challenging and gives me a lot of anxiety because there’s just so much weight in each individual interaction.”

With such a groundswell of enthusiasm for PISS, the timing couldn’t be better for the band to prepare its as-yet-untitled debut full-length. By the time they began recording it at the Hive Studios in Victoria with Colin Stewart and Max Frazer, PISS had already worked on the album as a group for over a year; Zantingh had spent five times as long on the lyrics alone. PISS have since finished the album, and when Northern Transmissions spoke with Zantingh and Paterson at the end of July, all that was left was waiting for samples to clear.

PISS formed around a specific idea Zantingh and Paterson had of what would become the album. The project weaves together poems she began writing during her undergrad, a choice Paterson encouraged after hearing her perform at a poetry reading hosted by literary events organization Real Vancouver. From that point on, Zantingh wrote many of her favourite works; ideas for the album came out in an organic burst she likens to magic. “That just comes from respecting and believing in myself but also being around people who see that in me.”

The three existing demos on PISS’s Bandcamp are a corrosive rush of hardcore punk that borders on grindcore, balanced with static-drenched distortion. “It’s not an entirely great representation of what the project is,” Paterson says, slightly trepidatious about listeners’ expectations. “The upcoming album is much more varied.”

PISS never veered away from their primary songwriting principle (every song begins as a concept, then every choice must support and uplift the original message), but according to Zantingh, “It [the album] looks very different now with all these new connections that I was able to make in my brain because of stuff that Ty was doing.”

“All the different voices you hear and all the different genre influences that are there are intended to give this impression of violence and these surrounding themes being everywhere, like all-consuming, omnipresent in culture, and specifically in alternative music subcultures,” Zantingh explains.

Despite the resolute vision behind PISS’s upcoming album, they work collaboratively in their jam space. When it comes to the live performances, though, “There isn’t really a lot of room for spontaneity whatsoever because my ability to perform the set relies really heavily on having a high degree of control over what’s happening on the stage,” Zantingh says. “Even little things, like, ‘What if Gavin puts his bass down at this part?’—until we practice it in the studio, and I can see how it’s gonna feel, then we’re not doing it. Everything around me needs to be controlled because I am not in control of myself when I am onstage.”

There’s nothing like witnessing PISS command the attention of a roomful of new audiences. A palpable atmospheric shift occurs when the band strikes its first note. Before PISS finish their opening song, the audience is no longer focused on their drink orders at the bar; background conversations screech to a halt as PISS screech in cathartic fury.

“I really love when we play a different city, and I get to remember the impact of the set on a room full of people who’ve never seen it before,” Zantingh beams, citing shows at Oaklands in Victoria, Crace Mountain in Nanaimo, and Sled Island Music + Arts Festival in Calgary as recent highlights. “Those were all really good reminders for me to remember what the project is about and who the project’s for.”

Perhaps the most potent reminder came when PISS opened for New York electronic dance trio Fcukers at Vancouver’s Fortune Sound Club in May, a show that also featured local hip-hop party-starter Prado Monroe. “I was scratching my head being like,’‘How do we fit into a bill like this? How does this really make sense?’” Paterson recalls, vexed. “I was like, ‘I have no idea what tonight is gonna look like’ and was just so surprised. The audience was very present with us. That was an amazing experience.”

“Violence can happen to anyone in any community,” Zantingh points out, “and I believe in the power of the [performance] to transcend a person’s individual tastes. I’ve had a lot of different people coming up to me and telling me that they don’t normally listen to punk music or hardcore music and that they felt moved by it.”

These reactions further embolden Zantingh to create challenging art that presents multiple access points for listeners to jump in, “like, ‘Okay, I recognize that. I feel comfortable with that. That’s a viewpoint that I understand’ or ‘That’s a genre that I appreciate.’” She aims to offer a “huge range of different viewpoints that maybe you need to hear to challenge you, to open yourself to explore what’s underneath your anger and be more critical of yourself, be more compassionate for yourself…. I think that we chocked the record full of lots of different genius people speaking about these things way more eloquently than I ever could,” she says of the multitude of samples. “I hope that whoever comes to the show is able to find a path for themselves through the challenging subject matter.”

Last night (August 21), PISS performed another milestone show, opening for punk rock icons Bratmobile at the Hollywood Theatre. It was PISS’s final Vancouver appearance before they embark on a six-week tour beginning September 13 with stops in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom.

There is zero doubt PISS will continue turning heads abroad. That their music has resonated with audiences so quickly and so vigorously speaks to the band’s creative talent and vision, but it also speaks to a widespread demand for safety, support, and understanding, a demand that transcends borders.

The towns and venues change, but wherever PISS go, what they want audiences to take away from their music remains the same: “Whatever they need,” Zantingh says. “I designed the record specifically with an understanding that this theme has so many different layers of people’s understanding of the topic, different opinions about violence, different ideologies, different experiences, different methods of expressing.”

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