In 2011, the television show Black Mirror premiered with their episode “The National Anthem”. An audacious pilot, the plot hinged around a kidnapped princess who would only be released if the prime minister of England agreed to have sex with a pig and have it live-streamed to the world. The episode ends ominously, the leader of one of the most powerful countries on Earth being ushered from the green room onto a brightly lit set as a four-hundred pound pig snorted around the concrete floors. You know something horrible is going to happen, and the tension lingers in the air as if it’s an event that has no end- that this pig will end up getting fucked for an eternity, long after the princess is freed. It’s a societal fall from grace so heinous that the muffled cries of human shame morph with the panicked squeals of swine in a way that serves as a depraved soundtrack to the 21st century. And if that’s an apt soundtrack, Chat Pile‘s sophomore release Cool World is the sound of pig-fucking put to music: a cacophony of drums, guitar, bass and vocals that clang, cringe, crash and squeal into a crescendo of caustic madness.
The band’s origins seem to start as the credits fade to black, their abrasive, dissonant songs existing on the periphery of a dozen different genres, a veritable slime mold of rock and roll, tendrils extending in all directions. Their 2022 debut God’s Country was one of the year’s best albums. Even the opening song of that record, “Slaughterhouse”, acknowledged the blood covered floors of a country in shambles, a population picking its way through the viscera of xenophobia, misogyny, and paralyzing skepticism, the corpse of a freshly fucked pig splattered beneath the feet of a population slowly descending into a political and social hellscape.
If all of this sounds absolutely miserable, it should: Chat Pile isn’t here to usher in your younger sister’s brat summer. In fact, one probably shouldn’t let Chat Pile anywhere near your younger sister. The band is a descendent of the first set of pig-fuckers, Big Black, Swans, and pre-Sister Sonic Youth, a genetic offshoot of hard-edged guitars, ball-shaking lowends and snare drums that sound like gunshots. It’s ugly shit for an ugly world. But the world of Chat Pile isn’t just an ugly one: it’s a fucking cool one, in every sense of the word. There’s a big uncalculated masculine swagger to the band’s music, a lineage of righteous indignation that’s weaved its way from the ninth century pillaging and plundering of the Vikings to the trenches and blitzkriegs of the 1900s, a giant rock and roll fist being waved in front of the pock-marked faces of evil. The world may be going to hell in the proverbial hand basket, but at least Chat Pile can do its best to wrest control of it from the hands of power-hungry assholes. And Cool World is that first fist to the jaw of the fascist, soul-sucking regime, a giant, screaming reclamation of power. It’s our world, and it’s time to take it fucking back.
Lead single and opening track “I Am Dog Now” comes in with an angular fury, a swell of strings before the band does what it does best. Cap’n Ron’s rigid, powerful drumming and Stin’s cavernous bass work together like a turn-of-the-century steampunk torture device. The band’s beating bloody heart has always revolved around the iron core of the band’s rhythm section, a bizarre, sickening combination of orbital bodies. The almost comically over-dressed guitars of Luther Manhole are drenched in effects, some that sound as if they were ripped from the pages of Steve Albini’s sonic equivalent of The Anarchist’s Cookbook, magnified by the highest objective, crushing the glass slide to shards of blood-shedding shivs. It’s massive, unforgivable rock and roll shit- a sound that no band in the game right now has managed to wrangle except these four miscreants from the middle of the dust bowl.
“I Am Dog Now” is a table-setter for those who eat shit, a sonic roll through the dog bowl of misery. ‘You take, you fucking take,’ screams Raygun Busch. ‘Trash mouth full of garbage. I am dog now. I am dog now.‘ Chat Pile has reduced humanity to its neanderthal self, consonants spat out in guttural emissions, hominids that are simply ugly representations of their equally ugly species. And this is just the first song, for Christ’s sake.
If “I Am Dog Now” represents humans at their primordial worst, second track “Shame” sees the species plastering the lipstick over bleeding chapped lips. The song starts with a nasty, twangy, dissonant guitar riff, before a second track of heavy, chorus-drenched guitars sparkle over Cap’n Ron and Stin’s melodic rhythm work. Raygun Busch’s vocals have always been a schizophrenic exploration of the larynx, and it’s in perfect form on “Shame.” At times, he recalls the laconic vocal style of kindred spirits of the ’90s dustbowl Paw, only to explode into death metal growls and pained, histrionic expressions of sheer torture, as if the lyrics are being squeezed out of a blood soaked rag. It’s hard to describe the music of Chat Pile without mixing your metaphors, as the band seems to mash and maul a myriad of sounds against their will, creating four-minutes of wildly original and visceral noise. Like noise luminaries Throbbing Gristle or even Captain Beefheart, the band has a way of twisting expectations into something that’s curiously captivating.
Speaking of Captain Beefheart, it’s probably no coincidence that the band’s song “Frownland” shares the same name as one of the Captain’s songs from the classic Trout Mask Replica. Where his “Frownland” was about escaping the clutches of a ‘land of gloom, where black jagged shadows remind me of the coming of your doom’ – a psychedelic plea to be the best version of yourself- Chat Pile realizes that’s a bunch of pig-shit. Chat Pile‘s “Frownland” is a place of inescapable misery, where even the pearly gates of heaven are a ‘rough and awful thing‘ and ‘every move is pain.’ The song is almost funky to be quite honest, in the same way Ciccone Youth-era Sonic Youth were funky- a filtering of syncopated rhythms through the fine mesh of a suburban hell-scape. “Funny Man” could be the b-side to “Frownland,” a glitchy stop and go explosion of drums, bass and guitar as Raygun pretty much sums up the entire theme of Cool World in a single line: ‘Outside there’s no mercy and not everyone can hide.’
One of the album’s finest moments is the sludgy, dark dirge of “Camcorder”. Like that first episode of Black Mirror, the song mirrors the disdain and emotional separation of a people from each other, a population that seems to watch the world unfold not from the benches of public parks or the halls of their schools, but on the glass and plastic screens of iPhones. Raygun Busch’s lyrics are depressive and foreboding:
‘Watch it change in my hands
Watch the whole goddamn world change
Everything that I know completely obliterated
Watch in change in my hands.’
As a comment on our human separation from each other, it’s not just the lyrics that carry the expressive weight. Sonically the band creates an ominous soundscape of abject melancholy. In a world where a fifty dollar a month unlimited data plan can get you all the death, destruction and genocide you want, there’s no more apt soundtrack than the horror-like chords of abandonment and hopelessness of “Camcorder”.
All this being said, in the end Chat Pile is simply a good fucking rock band, and Cool World showcases a band at the zenith of their creative arcs. This isn’t easy-listening by any means. Chat Pile demands your attention, and the sonic choke-hold they have around the necks of their fans is one that will certainly leave a mark. Like the pig-fucking in Black Mirror, Cool World leaves the listener in a state of temporary shock. It’s like the band has peeled back the layers of skin to showcase the ugly viscera beneath, a festering pile of pig guts, blood and pain. Unfortunately, this planet is the only one we have, and while Chat Pile is hyper-aware of all its incredible shittiness, the band is here to make it as cool as it possibly can be.
