There’s a sick irony to how a country that extols rhetoric of individual freedom, in the same gasp, has no problem commodifying human life as if it were meat to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. If this is American nihilism taken to its absolute zenith, then God’s Country, the first full length record from Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is the aural embodiment of such a concept.
Today, Chat Pile have revealed the album’s affecting second single “Why.” Of the track, vocalist Raygun Busch comments, “In OKC, there are huge crosses and statues of Jesus and enormous churches everywhere and yet the teachings of Christ cannot be found implemented anywhere. This is true for much of America and probably the world. Why? I hate seeing suffering; don’t you? Why should I live in a house while someone else lives under a bridge? Why do people have to live outside? Wickedness, all around us. Real horror.”
Chat Pile bassist Stin continues, “‘Why‘ contains a sample of the infamous Oklahoma tornado siren, which aside from going off regularly during the busy spring storm season, is tested every Saturday at noon in Oklahoma City. One particular Saturday, all four members of the band recorded the siren independently in different locations. We synched the recordings together and placed it in the song to help add a sense of place and also drive home the impending doom we all feel. We hope it makes your stomach knot up with anxiety the way it does ours.” Busch concludes, “Most people get to hear the tornado siren from the safety of shelter, but others do not. At any rate, having a literal alarm sound felt very apropos to the material.”
Having lived alongside the heaps of toxic refuse that the band derives its name from, the fatalism of daily life in the American Midwest permeates throughout the works of Chat Pile, and especially so on God’s Country. Exasperated by the pandemic, the hopelessness of climate change, the cattle shoot of global capitalism, and fueled by “…lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of THC,” God’s Country is as much of an acknowledgement of the Earth’s most assured demise as it is a snarling violent act of defiance against it. Within its over 40 minute runtime, God’s Country displays both Chat Pile’s most aggressively unhinged and contemplatively nuanced moments to date, drawing from its preceding two EPs and its score for the 2021 film, Tenkiller. In the band’s own words, the album is, at its heart, “Oklahoma’s specific brand of misery.” A misery intent on taking all down with it and its cacophonous chaos on its own terms as opposed to idly accepting its otherwise assured fall. This is what the end of the world sounds like.
God’s Country is available for pre-order here. See Chat Pile playing select shows this summer.
Chat Pile, on tour:
June 25 Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios
July 29 Oklahoma City, OK @ The Sanctuary (Records Release Show)
July 30 Austin, TX @ Chess Club
September 15 Oklahoma City, OK @ The Sanctuary
