atching a Piss show is like a visceral gut punch. A 30-minute, top-to-bottom retelling of their forthcoming debut album ‘You Made Me / Skin On Linen’, the Canadian hardcore punk band and their vocalist Taylor Zantingh’s live set is more akin to a performance art piece or a conceptual exorcism than a traditional gig.

Zantingh paces the stage, pained, straining and frequently bent double under the weight of her words. Around her, guitarist Tyler Patterson, bassist Gavin Moya and drummer Garreth Roberts conjure up slabs of noise that range from the brutal and uncompromising (‘I Wanted To Be A Singer’) to the perversely danceable (‘Time Loop At Hot Slit’). Interspersed between the tracks are clips of feminist activists, literary philosophers and young children. At the core and unavoidable through it all is the distress of Zantingh’s lived experience, as she performs from a record dealing with the ongoing trauma of sexual violence.

It’s far from classic festival fare, but at this year’s End Of The Road, the tent for Piss is heaving. Despite having only released three demos on Bandcamp at the time of playing, the word-of-mouth buzz around the quartet is tangible. The band have drawn increasingly dedicated crowds across Canada and North America since they began playing live in 2024, and at The Great Escape in Brighton this May, the quartet’s intensely powerful show was arguably the most talked-about of the festival.