Self-Surgery

Multi-instrumentalists, songwriters, lyricists, and singers Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie toiled from 2006 to 2008 as part of the black-metal band Red Host, making a name for themselves on the local Sacramento scene where they lived at the time. A decade later, they began working together again when they toured to champion the material for Wolfe’s 2017 album Hiss Spun. Wolfe’s exceptional vision is well known, with a unique approach that brings together metal, dark ambient, and folk. Less well known is Jess Gowrie’s, visceral, raw, fearsome, and efficient. Their reunion excludes the folk and ambient dimensions of the singer, this proposal being essentially rock, barely punctuated by a few small synthetic ornaments. Thus, two one-woman-bands make a masterful noise, giving free rein to a liberating savagery expressed by their heavy rhythms, bursts of distortion, incendiary melodies, and howls to the moon. Wolfe sings and plays the guitar, Gowrie hammers the drums, grinds the guitar, plucks the bass, and extracts sounds from her software. They also plan to invite other women musicians to join the Mrs. Piss project, whose preliminary form could evolve considerably over the course of the coming chapters.