Pisse are back and they are welcoming the new decade in style: Nine synth-trash protopunk smashers with an all-around nihilistic vibe and lyrics about funneling herbicides down your throat. Cheers! While these songs may sound a little bleaker than the band’s last releases, they are as versatile as always with four tunes even breaking the two-minute mark. Lyric-wise, they are adding insult to injury left and right as any decent punk band should. Overall, the music is focused, catchy and danceable. Perfect for smashing your face on the floor of a scuzzy Sternburg-swilling basement gig. The LP was recorded on two 4-track reel tape recorders in the infamous Schlachthaus Nebelschütz (Lausitz) and mastered by Daniel Husayn (North London Bomb Factory Mastering). If you want something new and interesting from Germany, this is it! Our take: Berlin’s Pisse has been bumping around for several years new, releasing a previous LP, a mini-LP spread across two 7”s, and a heap of EPs and compilation appearances. Interestingly, members also serve in the similarly named Berlin band Urin, making you wonder what you’d find were you to dig into those members’ internet search histories. Anyway, with this self-titled album Pisse have moved up in the world, signing to the UK-based Harbinger Sound label, who has a long tradition of plucking left-field and experimental gems from various corners of the underground. Pisse fits in, as their take on synth-punk has a freewheeling, experimental quality that pulls it out of the genre ghetto. Tracks like “Draußen Zuhause” and “Fliegerbombe” remind me of Lost Sounds, but there’s also a palpable hardcore influence throughout and moments of pure weirdness like the doo wop-infused “Zu Viel Speed.” While some bands that cross genre boundaries can sound neither here nor there, Pisse pull from synth-punk/punk and avant-garde/experimental traditions in a way that both camps can get behind.
