Studies have shown that increased physical distance from a person depletes our capacity for empathy towards them. But you don’t need a research paper to prove it. Ever shouted at a reckless driver from the armored confines of your car? Ever watched from the heights of a skyscraper as tiny, faceless masses scramble below? Have you struggled to see each one as an individual, harboring their very own passions and resentments? On their excellent 2022 debut God’s Country, Oklahoma City sludge-metal quartet Chat Pile rejected that bird’s-eye indifference. They clocked their subjects at an uncomfortably close range, observing the horrors of opioid addiction, the screams of slaughtered livestock, an amateur armed robbery, their gruesome proximity an antidote to detached isolation. Some of the microscopic detail was scraped from surfaces in the band members’ own lives, particularly industrial pollution within their home state; their very namesakes are giant mounds of toxic detritus that loom over an abandoned Oklahoma mining town. God’s Country read like a registry of dejected lives in the Southern Plains.
On their second album, Cool World, Chat Pile retreats from the tight zoom on their immediate surroundings, widening their lens to capture humanity’s collective violence. “Part of me doesn’t want people to think of Oklahoma as the armpit of the world,” lead singer Raygun Busch said in a recent interview. “The world is full of armpits.” The four-piece also broadens their approach sonically, incorporating mid-tempo metal, gothic new wave, and ’90s alternative into the pummeling noise they mastered on their first record. Their experiments across genre still sound muscular, but occasionally lack the urgent ferocity Chat Pile captured on God’s Country. And while Cool World’s panoramic view of human suffering can sometimes get a little blurry, its best songs still channel the band’s gift for heft and lurid specificity.
With its winding pace and pile-driving guitar, the mucky “Milk of Human Kindness” is far more indebted to Sweet Oblivion-era Screaming Trees than any punk or metal progeny. As it oozes along, bassist Stin—his tone knob cranked to the max—plucks notes that rattle like window panes on the verge of imploding. Busch holds a distance here that leaves you craving the point-blank inspection of older songs, but he still injects details that grab you by the head and force you to look closer. “I screamed about it all night,” he drones, drafting a vague image that is sharpened by a harrowing second stroke: “I’d heard nothing about the way they burn.”
Companion tracks “Camcorder” and “Tape” give a distant and grainy impression of violence. The former is cold and removed, trudging along with the sinister pace of Michael Myers. Busch sings of a shadowy evil whose shape isn’t totally clear, something that might have been finely fleshed-out on God’s Country. But his final reaction to this nebulous malignancy, “let’s watch it again,” is efficient in its brevity. This simple, open-ended phrase, sung with Busch’s trademark dread, suggests a sick delight in voyeurism—that what we are willfully watching is too sick to describe, but too intriguing to ignore. “Tape” is more formally and texturally rich, with a pulsing, choppy beat and a bassline that nods to Metallica’s indelible “Enter Sandman” riff. Busch screams tightly-worded verses, the flesh from his throat shredding off the muscle. “They made tapes!” he shouts. “It was the worst I ever saw.” Here, the song’s omitted details are doing the heavy lifting; you might picture some hideous snuff film, or news clips from Cambodia circa 1973.
Although Cool World doesn’t stomp with the same weight of God’s Country, Chat Pile’s stylistic experiments pay off. “Funny Man,” for example, opens with a storm of mine-blasting drums and leaded bass that could rip through a Glenn Branca piece. Then, as if bursting from the Trojan Horse, it morphs into articulate, melodic rock; Busch sings with a sharp and breathless cadence that trips along like certain strains of Modest Mouse. Busch dealt in concise brutality on God’s Country, but on “Funny Man” he flexes a more poetic and abstract grasp on language:
I broke my knees upon the pearl and onyxIn the hall of trophies built to honor my fatherSpilled the blood, gave ’em as much as they wantedStill had to dance for my supperStill had to give them my body
With its cinematic verses and high-wire leaps from no-wave to tweaked-out indie to hardcore, “Funny Man” represents the pinnacle of Chat Pile’s explorative potential. Busch has explained that the song is about “being a servant, indentured or otherwise,” but it also suggests the corporeal price of wealth, and the generational trauma of those who bled for it. Chat Pile know that no matter where you’re from, all blood leaves the same stain.
