Nine Songs: PISS

“We have to find some way to keep the rapists off the street.” “Law is only one way of doing it. I myself favour violence – deeply, I favour it. The reason that I favour it is that the law isn’t working. As long as the law isn’t working, women who have been attacked, or who are being attacked, need to be able to understand that they have a right to defend themselves…” Taylor Zantingh’s voice isn’t the only one on PISS’s debut album, you made me / skin on linen. The previous quote comes from the venerable academic and self-described feminist militant Andrea Dworkin, interviewed back in 2002, a few years before her death, two decades before Sarah Everard was raped and strangled by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens – an event horrifically emblematic of “the law isn’t working.” Dworkin stars posthumously in both “andrea I” and “andrea II” from the album. There’s also French philosopher Manon Garcia, who addresses the sickening case of Gisèle Pelicot, and the “resistance is possible” call to action of Rote Zora – the West German “terrorist” group. Zantingh borrows quotes from an interview two members gave in 1984. After all, the PISS vocalist never intended to be an in-the-spotlight mess...