Rapid Fire Reviews: Getting Hardcore with Chat Pile, Petrol Girls & Gospel

While there are always a million allegedly great local hardcore records that I get recommended every year, I only really have the time to cover the ones I'm most excited for. That informs this decision which features three albums I went into anticipating being VERY good. These are the results. Enjoy <3

God's Country - Chat Pila

This is the highly anticipated debut album from Oklahoma hardcore act Chat Pile who have released some successful EPs in the past few years to generate a lot of hype going into the album. While I was a bit of a late comer to those EPs I did hear the record's singles as they were released which also helped immensely to get me excited for it. Now that the record is here I can say that it's one of the darkest and most versatile hardcore records you'll hear this year. In fact even just saying "hardcore" feels like a catch-all for a band that interpolates numerous styles of experimental rock and metal into their songs. The record begins with a churning sludgy opening track that I've grown quite fond of but transitions to a whole different kind of misery on the noise rocky and politically charged Why. Despite their differences, both of these songs are thematically dark and sonically heavy in a way that the record keeps up through pretty much its entire runtime. Occasionally that heaviness is applied in really unique ways like when it seeps into the brooding and more methodical darkness of Pamela, a huge highlight that certainly comes with some Slint influence and thematically reminds me a lot of Big Black's Kerosene. The versatility is by far the record's strength and you can even see it within certain tracks like Anywhere which bounces between hardcore rager on the hook and a much more reserved midwestern style on the verses. What makes the album a must-hear is the sequence it goes on across its final three tracks starting with the harrowing The Mask which features some of the most insane screaming you'll hear anywhere on the record. That leads into I Don't Care If I Burn one of the most deranged and disturbing songs I think I've ever heard. The crackling instrumental reminds me very specifically of the eerie tension of the Clipping track Piano Burning but the real highlights is the lyrics and the vocal delivery. The terrifyingly stable refrains detail the thoughts of a clearly sick individual seeking revenge against someone with violence, it makes my skin crawl in the absolute best way. Oh yeah and the closing track is a paranoid nine minute monster about doing heroin and having a horrifying hallucination of Grimace smoking weed in your bedroom. Like Grimace the purple fucking McDonalds monster, I'm dead fucking serious. As silly as that may sound in concept it is a genuinely terrifying song that's striking for both its perfectly paranoid vocal performance and the unconquerable walls of instrumentation that rise and fall with the most vivid reactions to the hallucination. This record is dark, depraved and just flat out insane in its best moments but also just a genuinely exciting and refreshing take on the sounds of modern hardcore. Once again I just have to point out how many different sounds and styles the band manages to cover while continually sounding so heavy and intense. While I think there is room for improvement, particularly on some of the more "conventional" tracks in the record's midpoint, this is an excellent start to the bands career that lives up to the big expectations lofted onto it. 8/10

Baby - Petrol Girls

Petrol Girls are a London based punk band who first grabbed my attention a few years ago with the raw energy and lethal lyrical themes of their sophomore album. Somewhere in the meantime they kind of fell off my radar for some reason but I've been waiting for the opportunity to talk about this new album since I first heard about it a few days before it came out. Once this record starts the band doesn't waste any time getting into their groove with the methodical guitar riffs and snarling lead vocals on the excellent intro track Preachers. Things get much more chaotic on the following Feed My Fire which has an absolutely unstoppable energy coming from both the haze of explosive instrumentation and the screamed refrains that transition into one of the record's catchiest hooks. The records standout track is its lead single Baby, I Had An Abortion a song that I only wish I knew about sooner so I could have been enjoying it for longer. The track has a Riot Grrrl meets classic punk style to it with the pretty obvious and heavy-handed themes extrapolated into the pure rage of the grinding distorted instrumentation that rushes in on the hook. Not only is their righteous fury over control of their own bodies a winning formula for a punk song but they sell it even harder in the actual performance, this song fucking rules. Even on tracks like Unsettle or Sick & Tired which initially enter with a more reserved sound, they're only doing it to purposefully set up exciting moments and it totally works. Equally as satisfying is the pair of much more direct feminist and anti-cop anthems in collaboration with activist Janey Starling which don't hold anything back. In particular the "robbing dead women of dignity" refrain on Fight For Our Lives and the "how many bad apples till we look at the tree" line on Violent By Design are some of the most memorable moments of political fury the record has to offer. Thematically speaking this record is just one hit after another and these two tracks are followed by one of the most effective thematic highlights on the entire record One Or The Other, This song needs very little time and pretty simple lyrics to absolutely eviscerate the hypocrisy and over-simplification of social politics. Like seriously this song is such a simple but effective attack on the propaganda tools of oppressors that I'm just in awe of it. Also before I finish just because there is no real seamless place to get this in, I want to mention just how great the vocals across this entire record are. While the furious screams and cutthroat commentary on the verses are obviously great they also transition between styles really seamlessly and a lot of these songs feature excellent spoken word passages that add quite a bit to both their narratives and sonic development. Maybe choosing to lump these hardcore records together like this was a bad idea because they are turning out not just good, but some of the best records I've heard all year. While they could each be worthy of reviews far more in depth at this point just take my word for it, if you like punk in any fashion do yourself a favor and try this Petrol Girls record because it has all the makings of one of my favorite albums of the year when all is said and done. 8.5/10

The Loser - Gospel

The reason I didn't review this record right when it came out and all the buzz started flying around the internet is simple, I wasn't familiar with their previous album and I wanted that context going into this. That's still a pretty thin discography and didn't give me much to speculate about what the 17 years between releases might have done to their sound. One of the major things they decided was clearly to make more obvious use of their name and the church organs on opening track Bravo are only one of the numerous examples. In the age of Lingua Ignota adding those gospel elements to hardcore music is not only an excellent sonic boost but the opportunity to deliver thematically as well. It won't surprise you to hear that mental health and unhealthy coping mechanisms are some of the central themes of the record but they also do quite a bit of lyrical retrospecting, a technique I find pretty appealing coming from a band who has been away for so long. Subjects like of aging, youth and changing with the inevitable passing of time come up frequently across the record and despite the bands intense sound they often manage to approach these subjects with some level of nuance and even tragedy. I will say I find this tracklist to be a bit more inconsistent than the prior two records in this selection and while I think it gets off to a great start by the time we get to S.R.O it gets much more inconsistent. This isn't just on a song by song basis as many of them are technically engaging enough to keep my interest, but they almost all have certain passages I'm not crazy about though some take up more time than others. The best moments on the record, unsurprisingly, are when the band manages to channel their technical prowess into an absolutely riveting combination of sonic power and emotional fury and it's a feat they're pretty good at achieving consistently. By comparison I find the moments where the band tries to lean purely into their rage or deliver some more sludgy progression to be less appealing, though not necessarily unappealing. While I wasn't quite as crazy over this record as many other have been online I do find it to be a pretty exciting experience with a number of impressive highlights. Certainly enough for me to look out for anything Gospel does going forward and also a blessing that introduced me to their debut. 7/10