Mrs. Piss

A collaboration between Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie, Mrs. Piss is a dark, hard-hitting act whose music is steeped in the doom-struck thunder of metal, the sinister contemplation of goth, the insistent attack of industrial, and the noisy intelligence of indie rock. A project that came together when Gowrie was touring as part of Wolfe's road band, Mrs. Piss made their debut with a self-titled 2020 EP that featured eight songs as intelligent and uncompromised as they were punishing. Mrs. Piss was not the first time guitarist and singer Chelsea Wolfe and drummer Jess Gowrie had worked together. Gowrie contributed to the sessions that produced Wolfe's first album, 2006's Mistake in Parting, and they were both in a short-lived group called Red Host, who released an EP called Unclean in 2008. After Red Host broke up, Wolfe returned to her solo career, and Gowrie played drums in a variety of projects, including the sludgy California stoner rock band Horseneck. In 2017, Wolfe invited Gowrie to play drums on the recording sessions for her album Hiss Spin, and she stayed on for Wolfe's subsequent tour. While on the road and during downtime from work on Wolfe's 2019 release Birth of Violence, which also featured Gowrie, the two friends began exchanging musical ideas and writing songs together that fused the melodic sense of Wolfe's music with the intensity and hard attack of Gowrie's percussion. With Wolfe on guitars and vocals and Gowrie on drums, bass, guitar, and programming, the duo started recording their new material under the moniker Mrs. Piss, and in May 2020, they introduced their debut EP, a self-titled eight-song release running 19 minutes that was both intense and atmospheric. ~ Mark Deming