Cool World - Chat Pile: Review
Review by Lavender:
Chat Pile are a noisy metal outfit from Oklahoma who were building up tons of momentum and acclaim as an underground outfit before releasing their debut album God's Country in 2022. The album was immediately met with acclaim upon release, and I called it my favorite debut of the year. So as you'd expect I was pretty excited for a follow-up even before I heard standout singles like "Funny Man" and "I Am Dog Now." In one of the least surprising revelations of the year, Chat Pile throttles listeners once again on a follow-up that lives up to its expectations.
Let's get to those singles first, just as the album does with its lead single "I Am A Dog Now" which also serves as the opener. After a short, cloudy introduction you get right into the thumping downtuned guitars and short ripping lyrical refrains. The lyrics are fittingly animalistic and absolutely visceral making for an excellent opener. A few tracks later "Funny Man" pops up, which may be my favorite Chat Pile song to date. The transition between the controversial verses that sound like being held at gunpoint into these churning anguished choruses that feel like getting pistol-whipped is unbelievable. I also have so many refrains from the song just drilled into my head.
Later on the record, we get an amazing one-two punch in "Tape" and "The New World." "Tape" is probably my favorite of the deep cuts mostly because of its lyrics. Chat Pile have always dealt in brutality and rarely shy away from anything but this song is just another level of terror entirely. The repetition of "it was the worst I ever saw" feels genuinely tortured and the content of the verses really backs up that harrowing intensity. "The New World" comes up right after with some of the best guitar work I've ever heard from the band. It has these mesmerizing riffs that back the song's chorus that I can't stop honing in on. Once again the lyrics deliver an anguish that's straight-up harrowing with the record's ability to convey a desperate desire for things to not actually be as bad as they are coming into full view.
That same desire is at the core of "Shame," a song that reminds me a lot of Chat Pile's Flenser label mates Have A Nice Life. The song is almost certainly about the ongoing genocide in Palestine and while it's impossible to put the tragedy itself into words, the band does a great job at capturing the emotional helplessness of watching it unfold.
Elsewhere on the record though the emotion is less narrative and more viscerally sonic. "Frownland" is a great example which uses pummeling distortion and these anxiety-inducing guitar lines that leave me on edge in a way I find irresistible. When it erupts into its most frenetic moments it's absolutely irresistible. Closing track "No Way Out" similarly creates a compelling discomfort with its descending guitar lines and frenetic vocals. The way it all eventually develops this creeping horror-show pace is great and makes for a purely terrifying way to end the album off.
This record does a LOT right that sets up for not only deeply compelling moments but very unique ones. When it falters, however, is when those moments start to feel a bit more routine. I got some backlash online for not loving the record's second single "Masc" a take I stand by. The two main reasons I'm not crazy about it are the rumbling riffs underneath everything that don't really have much impact and seemingly only muddy the song, and the completely innocuous repetition of "I trust and bleed." Immediately following it on the album is "Milk Of Human Kindness" the most innocuous song on the album and one that doesn't even reach its most memorable point until a moodier second half.
That just leaves the album's 6-minute centerpiece "Camcorder." It's a track I have mixed feelings about mostly because of how lowkey the vocals are but the intimacy started to warm up on me once I noticed the alarming cascading guitar lines in the background. The song's methodical repetition can be paralyzing at points, but I also think it fails to really use its runtime to the best possible potential.
In full view of an album like Cool World though, those feel closer to nitpicks. With their sophomore effort Chat Pile have just as much to say as their debut and they continue to find striking ways to say it. So many of these songs simply cannot be ignored and they're not commanding that observance for no reason. Moment after moment on this record the band blindsides me with the brutality and sheer anguish of their lyrical content. It's one of those records that everyone is describing, appropriately I might add, as punishing and challenging. That's absolutely the case, which makes it all the more impressive just how little I can resist coming back to it over and over. 8/10
FOr more uncompromising noise, check out my review of Uboa's Impossible Light
