Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie rejoin forces in the guise of Mrs Piss. Their Self-Surgery is music done on their own terms, in their own way, with no overthinking.

Released: 29th May 2020

Label: Sargent House

Formats: DL / CD

Mrs. Piss is a collaboration between Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie. In fact it’s a reconnection. A musical reunion of friends and bandmates.

Sparked during the touring cycle for Wolfe’s Hiss Spun album in 2017, the music draws upon their rock, metal, and industrial influences but throws them out with what’s been termed “a heaviness spurred on by punk spirit.”

Let’s go a step further and go so far as to emphasise the darkness and the primal outpouring in a set that feels as urgent and visceral, if not more so, than anything either of them has created before. The chance, in the words of Jess Gowrie, “to not give a f**k and to just create.”  Eloquent and genuinely put.

Shorn of any concession to a commercial sheen, anything and everything goes. It feels like a reconnection too, to the work of Red Host, the indie black metal-tinged outfit where the fledgling Wolfe/Gowrie combo worked over a decade ago.

Musically one can’t help avoid the element of Sabbath inspired doom on the title track. A familiar monolithic heaviness with a vocal dragged out kicking and screaming before being interrupted by an out of control punky rush.

In the words of Chelsea Wolfe, it’s “a weird sonic vision.” Maybe the sonic version of the brew concocted by Macbeth’s three witches, the weird sisters, except there’s two of them and no fenny snakes or frogs were presumably harmed in the process.

Knelt is brilliant. Again, radiating the essential oils of darker metal, the lumbering dirge that takes up four minutes and four seconds is the prog track of the set. It’s the sort of track that the phrase ‘swimming in treacle’ was written for. The onslaught of overdrive, clouded in a dense mist begs the question of what’s going to emerge.

There’s a tongue in cheekiness about Nobody Wants To Party With Us. Hardly surprising. Self-Surgery is hardly music for celebration. The throbbing pulse that explodes into a visceral battle with distorted voices and rhythms is more at home to the disenfranchised and troubled.

In an album where the song titles give more than a hint at the content, The Megababes Of The Wild Order could be their signature piece. Wildly undulating and driven by a clatter of drums and bass while we see a punkier edge surface in Downer Surrounded By Uppers and Mrs Piss. In the latter, genres cross-pollinate and create a hybrid that shakes and caresses in equal measures.

Barely twenty minutes pass before the curtains are drawn on a refreshingly empowering experience. But that’s enough. Music that’s built to soundtrack the flickering strobe of an inescapable nightmare. Disturbingly addictive.

Listen to Downer Surrounded By Uppers here:

Mrs Piss online: Instagram

Chelsea Wolfe online: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Bandcamp

Jess Gowrie online: Instagram

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