Chat Pile Share New Single 'Masc' Ahead of Sophomore Album

Besides being the name of a largely forgotten (and panned) 90s film, Cool World makes for an apt title of Chat Pile’s sophomore full-length record. In the context of a Chat Pile record, the words are steeped in a grim double entendre that not only evokes imagery of a dying planet but a progression from the band’s previous work, moving the scope of its depiction of modern malaise from just “God’s Country” to the entirety of humankind. “'Cool World' covers similar themes to our last album, except now exploded from a micro to macro scale, with thoughts specifically about disasters abroad, at home, and how they affect one another,” says vocalist Raygun Busch.  “If I had to describe the album in one sentence,” Busch continues, “It’s hard not to borrow from Voltaire, so I won’t resist – 'Cool World' is about the price at which we eat sugar in America.”

The Oklahoma City noise rock quartet will release Cool World October 11th via The Flenser [pre-order].  Now, Chat Pile premiere the album's second single "Masc" with an epic, narrative music video by Stephen Mondics (director) and Mario DeLeon (producer).  Bassist Stin comments, "This is our first time collaborating with Stephen Mondics and the band is completely blown away with how well he was able to capture the spirit of the song. As huge movie buffs, it's also a legitimate dream-come-true to have a music video shot completely on film under our belts." 

Busch adds, "'Masc' is the saddest Chat Pile song since 'Tenkiller.' Unlike the rest of the album, this song deals with horrors of interpersonal intimacy, yet it is connected with the rest of the record through the overarching theme of oppression, despair and malaise."

Like the towering mounds of toxic waste, the music of Chat Pile is a suffocating, grotesque embodiment of the existential anguish that has defined the 21st Century. It figures that a band with this abrasive, unrelenting, and outlandish of a sound has stuck as strong of a chord as it has. Dread has replaced the American dream, and Chat Pile’s music is a poignant reminder of that shift – a portrait of an American rock band molded by a society defined by its cold and cruel power systems.

Though very much on-brand with Chat Pile’s signature flavor of cacophonous, sludgy noise rock, the band’s shift to a global thematic focus on Cool World not only compliments the broader experimentations it employs with their songwriting but also how they dissect the album’s core theme of violence.

Melded into the band’s twisted foundational sound are traces of other eclectic genre stylings, with examples of gazy, goth-tinged dirges to abrasive yet anthemic alt/indie-esque hooks and off-kilter metal grooves only scratching the surface of what can be heard in the album’s ten tracks. “While we wanted our follow-up to 'God’s Country' to still capture the immediate, uncompromising essence of Chat Pile, we also knew that with 'Cool World,' we’d want to stretch the definition of our 'sound' to reflect our tastes beyond just noise rock territory,” reflects bassist Stin. “Now that we had some form of creative comfort zones in place after hitting that milestone of putting out a full-length record, album #2 felt like the perfect opportunity to challenge those limits.” Besides stylistically stretching the boundaries of the Chat Pile sound, Cool World is also the band’s first record to have someone else handle mixing duties, with Ben Greenberg of Uniform (Algiers, Drab Majesty, Metz) capturing and further amplifying the quartet’s unmistakably outsider and folk-art edge.

The proverbial thread tying all of the experimentation on Cool World together is the depth to which Chat Pile dissects the album’s theme of violence, and the record itself is apocalyptically bleak. Sure, Chat Pile’s debut album was plenty disturbing with its B-movie-inspired interpretation of a “real American horror story”; what Chat Pile depicts on Cool World is unsettling not just from its visceral noise rock onslaught, but from depicting how all sorts of atrocities are pretty much standard parts of modern existence. 

See Chat Pile on the road this fall with Agriculture and Mamaleek and catch them at 2025 Roadburn Fest in Tilburg, NL.  More soon.

Chat Pile on tour:

August 31  Oklahoma City, OK @ The Sanctuary [sold out]
September 7  Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck [sold out]
October 31  Oklahoma City, OK - 89th Street $
November 1  Oklahoma City, OK - 89th Street % [sold out]
November 2  Columbia, MO - The Blue Note %
November 3  Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room %
November 5  Chicago, IL - Thalia Hall %
November 6  Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line %
November 8  Lakewood, OH - Mahall’s #
November 9  Detroit, MI - The Majestic Theatre #
November 11  Toronto, ON - The Concert Hall #
November 12  Montreal, QC - Théâtre Fairmount #
November 14  Burlington, VT - Showcase Lounge @ Higher Ground ^
November 15  Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church ^
November 16  New York, NY - (Le) Poisson Rouge ^
November 17  Boston, MA - The Sinclair ^
November 19  Baltimore, MD - Metro Gallery *
November 20  Richmond, VA - The Broadberry *
November 21  Greensboro, NC - Hangar 1819 *
November 22  Nashville, TN - The End *

April 17-20  Tilburg, NL @ Roadburn Festival

$ with Nightosphere, Nerver
% with Agriculture, Porcelain
# with Agriculture, Traindodge
^  with Mamaleek, Traindodge
* with Mamaleek, thirdface

Photo credit: Bayley Hanes

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