Chat Pile: “It’s just a big anti-war statement, the whole album”

Oklahoma’s dirtbag metal band Chat Pile are taking on the great, stinking mess of 21st-century America, armed with gallows humour, acerbic lyricism and a crushingly heavy sound

“It fills me with despair to think about what life is going to be like for people in 50 years,” says guitarist Luther Manhole, speaking as an Oklahoman first and a cynical punk rocker second. “I mean, we live in a state that has giant tornadoes that destroy towns, and all that is getting worse and worse.” 

Named after the heaps of toxic mining waste that litter the countryside of north-east Oklahoma, Chat Pile’s music “definitely comes out of a feeling of climate apocalypse”.

The four-piece broke out in 2022 with their self-produced album God’s Country, an unflinching portrait of 21st-century American dystopia in which frontman Raygun Busch is either raging against homelessness, guns and industrial meat, or inhabiting other folk’s fantasies of murder, arson and suicide. 

His lyrics draw from the poisoned well of American horror stories, blurring the theatrical – like Pamela, written from the perspective of Friday the 13th killer Jason Voorhees’ mother – with the disturbingly real. On Why?, the album’s boldest statement, Raygun takes aim at the absurdity of America’s homelessness epidemic, asking a string of impossible questions over a detuned mega-riff: “Why do people have to live outside?… I’ve never had to push all my shit around in a shopping cart – have you?”

They also rock in excelsis. The pseudonymous bandmates, completed by Stin (bassist) and Cap’n Ron (drums), channel the noise-punk-sludge canon that stretches from Dead Kennedys and Sonic Youth through to the Jesus Lizard, Big Black, Deftones and even Korn. On stage, they play with the kind of elastic precision that rewards 20 years’ experience, having only formed Chat Pile in their mid-30s. 

But the uber-heavy riffage and horrorcore imagery stands in contrast to their almost avuncular stage profile, as Raygun, a roaming dad-bod in shorts and bare feet, dedicates his between-song banter to localised film nerdery. (At London’s Electric Ballroom this summer, fans were treated to a disquisition on the works of Mike Leigh.) In the tradition of alt-culture guides like the Nurse With Wound list or Kurt Cobain’s journals, their lyrics and interviews are studded with cool references to explore: Pere Ubu, MDC, Miguel Arteta, Voltaire.

God’s Country signalled the arrival of a band for our times, inspiring dedicated followers at home and abroad; in Oklahoma City, a new DIY venue (Slaughterhouse) and zine (We Have The Means) named themselves after Chat Pile lyrics, and they’re booked to headline next year’s edition of iconic heavy music festival Roadburn in the Netherlands. But right now, they’re in the middle of a major US tour – starting with two sold-out dates in their hometown – to launch their second LP.

Cool World looks beyond its predecessor’s “tales from the Plains” to assess the whole rotten, stinking, imperialist mess of it all – genocide, militarism, hypocrisy – and takes its name from a Roger Rabbit-style “adult animated fantasy” with a four percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. There are no nine-minute weed-psychosis meltdowns about Happy Meal toys this time. “We wanted to be punchier and more streamlined,” says Luther. The first LP was written “deep in the middle of Covid and a lot of personal issues,” adds Stin. “It was a very hectic, negative time trying to make music work. This time around, we all had the ability to focus on it.”

They’re especially proud of Funny Man. “It’s the first time we’ve ever achieved the perfect, tight, three-and-a-half minute, Beavis and Butt-Head heavy metal song,” beams Stin. Cast in the mould of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, it’s about “the USA grinding the poorest families in our country to fucking dust every generation,” explains Raygun. “It’s just a big anti-war statement, the whole album – every song is about how much I hate war. Man’s greatest shame.”

It could all feel so oppressive and bleak, yet the band’s philosophy is decidedly humane, full of pathos and gallows humour. Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau turns out to be the inspiration for first single, I Am Dog Now, a deep-fried block of death growls and bleeding guitars. “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains,” quotes Raygun, whose deadpan lands just as magnetically offstage. “It’s about how, if you’re not treated like a human being, you’re not required to act like one.”

Any hint of self-seriousness is punctured by the mad goings-on in their videos, which are populated by crazed preachers, vein-popping fighters and all-American pig-babies straight from a Harmony Korine film set. Cinema is a constant touchstone for the band, with references seeded throughout the lyrics and in conversation. Cool World’s doomy epic Camcorder, a work of grisly fan fiction inspired by 80s shocker Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, is mirrored on the album by Tape, a tale of “rural depravity” over gothy 90s guitars that’s “also, on a grander scale, about seeing kids’ faces get blown apart on Instagram.” 

And there’s no misunderstanding the visual horror behind the growls of Shame, the album’s nearest successor to Why?: “In their parents arms, the kids were falling apart/ Broken tiny bodies, holding tiny still hearts,” Raygun murmurs over waterfalls of distortion. It is, of course, about Gaza. “But I want it to apply to all wars. It could apply to Vietnam and America. All war is terrible. But yeah, at the time I wrote that, I’m seeing the guy get run over by a fucking tank.”

Lurking in the background is the state of Oklahoma, the fifth member of Chat Pile. The sleeve of Cool World depicts a local landmark – “an enormous cross that overlooks this row of strip malls and fast food restaurants, built in the parking lot of a giant megachurch,” says Stin. “It’s absurd, the actual dimensions of it.” 

Located on the western stretch of the Bible Belt, Oklahoma is an evangelical stronghold that’s voted Republican in every one of its 77 counties since 2004. But there’s long been a functioning underground, from blues rock and hardcore punk to the Flaming Lips and antifascist folkie Woody Guthrie. Chat Pile seem energised by the quirks of their home state, feeling like insiders and outsiders all at once. They aim to put their “Oklahoma dirtbag metal” sound on the map, just as Slipknot did with Iowa.

All four of the band moved to Oklahoma City from elsewhere: Raygun grew up in the state’s polluted oil town of Ponca City; Luther is from the suburb of Moore, famous for country megastar Toby Keith “and being hit by F5 tornadoes twice”; and brothers Ron and Stin are from rural Asher, population: 373. “My graduating class had 12 people in it,” remembers Stin.

Rock radio delivered Kurt Cobain to Stin’s 12-year-old ears, a signpost towards punk rock escapism. “Nirvana were a huge revelation for me,” he says. “There’s a documentary about the Seattle scene called Hype! that came out in 1996 – that movie completely cracked my world open.” Raygun chimes in: “And I’m watching that movie in a different shitty small town in Oklahoma, probably at the same time, like, ‘This is what I’ll be doing.’ Watching movies, reading books and music was the portal out of Oklahoma.” 

They spent their 20s and beyond doing time in local bands. Luther – who’s six years younger than the others – honed his mathcore chops, while Ron and Stin played in noise-rock outfit Found Footage, and Raygun released scratchy lo-fi as Randy Rulz. After forming in 2019, Chat Pile made up for lost time, self-releasing two EPs the same year, signing to off-kilter metal label The Flenser and recording a fantastically eccentric soundtrack for indie thriller Tenkiller.

The advantages to striking gold near middle age are “endless”, notes Stin. They’re mature enough to handle intra-band conflict, stabilised by wives and girlfriends, and are past the age of being too reckless with drink and drugs. “Nobody smokes cigarettes any more,” laments Raygun. “I can’t even imagine the stupid shit I would say in interviews if I was 21 years old and people put a mic in front of my face,” laughs Stin. “The only disadvantage is now I’ve got to throw my middle-aged body around for three weeks in a row on tour.” In the van, they’re more likely to be dissecting the films of Gregg Araki than indulging in rock ’n’ roll cliches. Yet there’s a sense of urgency about the project – mega-riffs to be written, enemies to antagonise. And time is limited.

Cool World ends with No Way Out, a bruising barrage of almost-funky nu-metal aimed at the fossil fuel giants who’ve aided and abetted climate disaster: “Feed them lies/ Used to be so much time.” All of that’s connected to war, too, says Raygun. “Instead of doing anything about the climate right now, we’re giving billions of dollars to Israel to blow up little kids’ heads and dance on the beach. It’s pretty scary. I’m about to turn 40. A lot of our fans are 20, and I’m just like, ‘What are they looking at?’ We had the world’s hottest day on record ever last week – two days in a row.” 

“Seeing so much crazy stuff going on in the world,” adds Luther, “it’s easy to get a little existential, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, what else would we write about right now, anyway?” shrugs Raygun. “People that aren’t talking about shit like this are cowards. This is the point of creating art, you know?”