Cool World
Chat Pile’s sludgy mix of nu metal and ’90s underground rock isn’t anything new, but it’s hard to imagine it existing so comfortably at any other time. Part of it’s their willingness to traverse what in another era would’ve been uncrossable cultural lines: Pledging your allegiance to the funny, post-punk surrealism of a band like Pere Ubu (“Camcorder”) at the same time as the single-entendre misery of Korn (“Funny Man”), for example. If metal is, on some level, guitar-country, Chat Pile is firmly set in its rhythm section, which is as rumbling and inescapable as the power lines and strip-mined hills of the Middle America outside their window, leaving the guitars primarily to peel paint. Where guys this misanthropic might’ve been considered social liabilities in their past (or at least dangers to their parents and church youth group), now they sound content to stay in their rooms and pig out on memes about the world they’ve always known was in ruin. “Tape” is the peak here not because it’s the hardest but because it’s the funkiest, whatever funk means to bands like this. Forget alienation—they’re laughing.
On an album that paints a panoramic view of human suffering, the Oklahoma City group sometimes sacrifices ferocity as it expands its muscular sludge-metal sound.
Cool World is instrumentally gripping, vocally enthralling, and lyrically calls out the horrors of late-stage capitalism.
It’s Oklahoma City outsiders Chat Pile vs. the world on their uncompromising second album…
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Since the release of their debut album, 2022's "God's Country", CHAT PILE have become unofficial standard bearers for the noise rock scene. Admittedly, as a genre, noise rock is never less than nebulous and ill-defined, with bands like WRONG and EYE FLYS at one end of the spectrum, and experimental...
"It brought me solace to have a record I can keep for my personal journal of existential doom."
A review of Cool World by Chat Pile, available worldwide October 11th via The Flenser
Chat Pile's ‘Cool World’ leaves the ears ringing and paints a hopeless, disquieting vision of modern America.
Chat Pile's new album does not offer catharsis; it is just an unflinching account of the violence we inflict on each other on an individual and global scale.
Cool World by Chat Pile album review by Justin Hagberg for Northern Transmissions. The Oklahoma City band's LP is now out via The Flenser
Chat Pile flexes more of their songwriting chops and dynamic range within the mental spirallings of 'Cool World.'