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Each new release from these Oklahoma natives really strips back a new layer on the proverbial onion. Their fight-or-flight inducing 2022 debut ‘God’s Country’ aimed the microscope at the decay of mental health, homelessness, public shooting victim POV’s, suicidal ideation, you name it. Each track was a vividly delineated snapshot into a specific societal ill or struggle, narrated with unhinged vitriol by frontman Raygun Busch. Certainly not for the easily queasy, it proved Chat Pile’s staying power as a burgeoning musical toxin, not too dissimilar to the piles of mining refuse they’ve named themselves after. 2024’s ‘Cool World’ was their most consistently grim collection of tracks, leaning more heavily on their purely noise rock alla Jesus Lizard influence. It was a test in just how far into the murk of depravity one could travel before the point of no return became a reality. Astoundingly, Chat Pile now seems to have embraced this newfound hideousness, using it to fuel their most apocalyptic and somehow most melodic record thus far.
‘Who Loves The Sun’ takes way more musical risks than their previous two albums did. It harkens back to a split EP the band did with Kansas City’s Nerver back in 2023, where Chat Pile were more content to play the indie route. Their contributions to the project were tuneful, yet steeped in the kind of viscous bleakness that the band has enhanced their sound with over the last few years. On their latest, songs like “Same Rules” and “Christabel ‘26” make do with a similar depressiveness, though the biggest difference is the reconvening of their trademark sludge and noise as a gnarly counterpart. This album soundtracks the end of our lives as we know them, tied up with the noose of a closer “October All the Time”. The quasi-warmth of its exterior is hiding a sub-zero metaphor, and for non-Americans, October essentially represents the period between the browning decay of autumn and winter’s chilling wilderness. Other standout moments like the lead single “PEN I S MALL” funnel the hopelessness in the grind of dead-end employment into a pigfuck gargantuan, resulting in one of the band’s most eviscerating tunes to date.
The devilish, tritonal riffs that kick off and carry the opener “Creature” represent the same Satanic world order that is driving this planet into the ground as we speak. Lyrically, the track sets up a lot of the themes of the record, as any good opener should, really. It doesn’t take too long to realise who the ire is being directed at, nor should it take an Einstein to figure out why those responsible deserve such a lashing. The barren wasteland of earth at the end of the record almost gets forecast on this cut, like a premonition in a nightmare. It gives the rest of the record an unshakable sense of doom as we plod from horror to horror. These horrors include things like the overstimulating, non-stop onslaught of death and famine being doom-scrolled through on our phones that “Influence” touches upon. Also, surveillance states and our naivety in letting the elites ransack our privacy for nothing in return except decreased safety, which “Christabel ‘26” lays out in deeply psychological detail.
We even get a generous nod to the story of Medea on the climax of the album, “Family Funeral”. It’s essentially a beat-by-beat retelling through her perspective, the tragedy of being betrayed by your husband and having no better means of punishing him than through killing your own children to prevent said cheating husband from having an heir. Certainly an analogy that can be applied to humanity’s own selfishness and cruelty, where such behavioural pitfalls can lead to karmic comeuppance. In that sense, there is an air of schadenfreude around this track. It’s hopeful in a morbid way, that those who wrong the innocent for hubristic gain will suffer fates that are tenfold what they inflicted. Maybe it’s likely, I’d like to imagine that one day, people inclined to offend like that will simply wake up to themselves. It would save us peasants a lot of trouble. Then again, I’ve always wondered what human meat would taste like if it was well-fed…
