Chat Pile’s distinct flavor of midwestern melancholy came to the masses in the form of 2022’s God’s Country, giving a look at the intricacies of what make this Oklahoma City foursome what they are: noise rock song structures, fat bass work a la The Jesus Lizard which at times borders on nu metal, and shouted, masterfully written lyrics that all made it one of this writer’s favorite records that year. Their track record makes the anticipation of their new album, Cool World all that more palpable: the boys are back and have moved on from the simplicity of the Country and are ready to take on the World.
I sat down with bassist Stin, vocalist Raygun Busch and guitarist Luther Manhole to talk about the time between albums and the eventual transition to their time and place in 2024. We discussed their live shows, whether that be their first time playing New York City with Scarcity, opening for Baroness for a few shows on tour last year or what it means taking The Flenser labelmates Mamaleek with them on their own headlining tour. Stin’s electric bass playing comes across in their music, so we talked influences on the instrument as well as Raygun’s lyrics and how well they mesh with preexisting instrumental parts. If you loved the last record or noise rock with some extra heaviness to it, Cool World is all yours.
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What was it like over the course of these couple of years between the release of God’s Country to now releasing Cool World?
Stin: It’s been really weird and unexpected. We started this band as kind of a way to hang out with each other and maybe play some local shows, but over time it snowballed into its own beast. The last 2 years have been incredibly crazy in all the best ways. It has far exceeded any expectations or ambitions that this band had to begin with. For me it’s been this 100% positive, cool thing. We’ve been given a gift, and it has kept on giving for the time being.
Raygun Busch: I agree.
Luther Manhole: A lot has changed in the past couple of years, we didn’t even get to do a full US/ tour for God’s Country until a year after it came out. We were all still working full time; it’s really hard to take 3 or 4 weeks off to play shows and your job to be cool with it. We did a few shorter runs of tours, and it became a more viable full time thing. It went from “who knows what it could be” to being seemingly “my entire life”, which is great, I didn’t think it would be possible. I thought it would just be friends having fun but people are excited about it and it’s just the thing I do now.
Very few bands have this grand aspiration for themselves from day 1 and you are certainly more the norm there as opposed to the exception.
Stin: Especially for bands doing crazier music. Nobody really starts an extreme band with the aspirations of quitting your job. My TV has built-in channels that show me music videos and I sit back and watch just for fun. You see these weird corporate alternative rock bands, where it’s obvious that they have no background in a community or a scene, they have no artistic ambition beyond trying to be a famous rock star. Even in 2024 it’s amazing to see people try to pull off that horseshit. In what world can you just think you are going to be an arena band out of nowhere?
Maybe somebody’s parents are successful lawyers somewhere and their kids need something to do.
Stin: It looks like someone’s debutante coming-out party.
“Dad I’m a rock star”, “Sure you are buddy, here’s some money”
I know you made it out to NYC to play two shows with Scarcity.
LM: We played those shows for their first album release, they were the first 2 shows we ever had to fly out for support. We did some shows with Planning for Burial in Philly and in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Doug Moore is great, he is in that band Pyrrhon who are awesome and Weeping Sores who are super underrated. It was a weird moment for me because I didn’t realize that he was in Weeping Sores as well. We played another NYC show and I was speaking to him and his partner Caroline and she had done the artwork for it. Somehow she mentioned that album cover and I was freaking out because I didn’t know that.
Stin: That run of shows was really cool, because no one had really invited us outside of our region before. To be able to play Vitus in particular was special because when you play heavy music your whole life, that is such a legendary place that you associate with “real bands”. I said to myself, “Maybe we’re a real band?”
Starting in your part of the country you wanted to expand upon your scope for album #2. What helped to separate your view and approach when transitioning from one album cycle to another?
RB: For this one I was thinking our first release was Dungeon, the 2nd Skin, then Country. I was thinking about the idea of “country in a world space” and skin is the original prison of existence. There are no rules on what to do. I could try to write more horror stories on the plains and adhere to this strict thing that we do, or I can do whatever I want. I chose the latter and it’s my perspective which I exploded out a bit more. Part of me doesn’t want people to think of Oklahoma as the armpit of the world, the world is full of armpits. The whole world is horrible, but also beautiful. Existence is complicated.
Stin: When writing the instrumentals, we write some parts and see what goes together. It either sticks or maybe it’s an album #3 thing.
It comes across as free form, do you look at the lyrics and see where it fits?
RB: The way my process works is that I get the instrumentals and I have a running list of topics that I want to include on the album and I decide that I want to do “one of these kinds of songs”. But I have no plan, the song “Why” was meant to be kind of like a tough guy, I didn’t anticipate it to be the song that it was. It was the instrumental I had and I decided right then what song I wanted it to be.
Stin: I think “Why” has one of the more bone-chilling deliveries on that album.
LM: That is one of those instrumentals that just came to us and we presented it to Ray, that’s just how all of our songs go. Very free form and we write what comes to us.
Stin: The only directive that we had going into Cool World for Luther and I was to make the songs more direct. On God’s Country the songs were a little more sprawling and there was a low-key prog element in there with weird time signatures but this time we wanted to do more of a 4/4, 3 minute, punk rock sort of approach to the songs on this one. For the most part I think we achieved that.
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Stin you talk about the songwriting, and when I think of bands around my own genesis, like Helmet and more recently The Jesus Lizard, I hear your bass work. What are your biggest influences when it comes to bass playing?
Stin: My whole life I have been obsessed with bands where bass is in the forefront. It’s not like I sought them out, I just find myself attracted to bands like that. I love music that is so groove oriented and I think that’s what Chat Pile does.
LM: I think that’s what we bonded over, I also really like bass forward music. Usually when we are recording, I find myself as the guitarist to have Stin turn up more.
Stin: The Jesus Lizard is first and foremost but Chris Squire of Yes is another, on those early records the bass is super forward. There’s no secret that I’m a huge Korn fan with their major clicky bass. Going back to bands like the Minutemen, the parts are mixed equal and even Anthrax’s Among The Living has some of the best bass tones and it’s forward too.
When you consider how we write with Cool World, I think we did the count the other day and 8 of the songs are based on bass grooves I had written. A lot of times you hear the bass carry the melody and Luther adds the texture to it. The parts change in the song due to the guitar and not the bass.
LM: A lot of the songs are not written with guitar forward. Since I am the only guitarist, I know that. Stin has like 30 seconds or less on bass and we jam that a whole bunch and I improvise over it to see what works.
There is an air of authenticity to what you do by swapping bass to lead and writing. You aren’t doing this to be unique, but instead that’s just how this band operates.
Stin: Plus, it’s the kind of music that we would want to listen to; that’s been our Northern Star. We have been asked if we write with the audience in mind and we are collectively like “no”. As long as we like it and we would listen to it on our own, we know we are doing the right thing. I don’t think we plan to break that formula.
LM: The songs are really just fun to play live. If a song gives me the feeling of “this song rocks”, I feel like we have done a good job.
If you aren’t enjoying what you’re doing, then what are you actually doing?
Stin: To that point and with bass playing especially with heavy music, how many bands do you see a guy playing bass because he is a guitar player, and they didn’t need another one? I am through and through a bass player, guitar is not something I aspire towards. If anyone wanted me to do something else in the band, I would be useless.
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I like the aesthetic of your artwork on both albums. What exactly is the image on the cover of Cool World?
Stin: Just north of Oklahoma City off of I-35 there is the huge megachurch, one of the oldest ones too; that cross has to be 20 years old at this point. The picture doesn’t even give you an idea of how big it actually is.
Granted we don’t have that in the Northeast, but by watching The Righteous Gemstones, should that help me to understand?
Stin: It is very much that world of things. But with The Righteous Gemstones there is this colorful southern element to it. This is the most corporate, sanitized, focus group driven version of Christianity that you could ever imagine. The cross overlooks a highway and it has big box stores and fast food restaurants near it; it is the most homogenized version of middle America that you can imagine. It felt like a powerful image of what American life and culture is coming to.
The image juxtaposes this giant cross with dead grass which seems to be dying in spite of this powerful monolith amongst this city.
Stin: We are trying to invoke the angsty anti-religious rant that’s as old as time which still holds true. You have these organizations that are supposed to be helping people and making the world a better place. All they end up doing is hoard wealth and avoid paying taxes and politically make life difficult for people who are different than them. This huge emblem of oppression would be one of the most defining elements of the landscape out here.
I see you guys are going to be on a run of tour dates with labelmates Mamaleek. What is it like to get a band such as theirs out on the road?
LM: I’m super excited about it. They are super mysterious and anonymous but we have met some of them and they are great dudes. Even before we signed with The Flenser we were drawn in by their previous album Diner Coffee. There is a tunefulness to their chaos in an almost cinematic way. There are almost trip hop moments in there too.
Stin: It’s really important when we take a band like that out on the road, that we want to engage our audiences with eclectic stuff. We want bands that might expose people to something a little different. It seems like a good thing to associate ourselves with all this different art.
When you played NYC most recently were you support?
Stin: We headlined Vitus and we played le Poisson Rouge in September with Nerver and Empire State Bastard.
LM: We really like LPR and we even got some sandwiches like a chopped cheese at the bodega down Bleecker Street.
RB: Yeah, Bleecker’s Finest Deli, I got a pastrami sandwich with avocado on it. It was very good.
Stin: There is also a great record store around the corner that I definitely spent too much money at.
I love the idea of mixed bills, because as a fan of music I have definitely been exposed to bands I wasn’t prepared for. For example, when I saw Baroness recently with Imperial Triumphant and Sheer Mag. The people who didn’t know what Imperial was found out really fast.
Stin: There were definitely some confused people out there.
RB: We literally experienced that confusion.
Stin: We played on that same tour for 2 shows in Minneapolis and then Chicago. Minneapolis was incredible.
RB: It was at the Purple Rain Club too.
Stin: The next night in Chicago the audience was a little stone-faced as we are up there doing our own thing, dancing and all. The crowd wasn’t giving back to us. This is what it’s like to open for a big band.
LM: We were already on tour so that’s how we ended up there. Spotlights played the show with us too and their drummer is super cool.
Anything else to add?
Stin: If you don’t see your name on the tour, trust me we will be playing in your city, there are many more shows upcoming for Chat Pile.
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Cool World releases October 11th via The Flenser.
Chat Pile on tour:
October 31 – Oklahoma City, OK – 89th Street $ [sold out]
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 *
February 14 – Dallas, TX – Trees +
February 15 – Houston, TX – Secret Group +
February 16 – Austin, TX – Mohawk ~
February 18 – Albuquerque, NM – Sister Bar +
February 20 – Phoenix, AZ – The Nile Theater ~
February 21 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar +
February 22 – Pomona, CA – The Glasshouse +
February 23 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall ~
February 25 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theater ~
February 26 – Seattle, WA – Neumos ~
February 27 – Vancouver, BC – The Pearl +
March 1 – Calgary, AB – Commonwealth Bar +
March 2 – Edmonton, AB – Starlite Room +
March 4 – Boise, ID – Knitting Factory +
March 5 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge +
March 6 – Denver, CO – Gothic Theater +
April 17-20 Tilburg, NL @ Roadburn Festival
$ with Nightosphere, Nerver
% with Agriculture, Porcelain
# with Agriculture, Traindodge
^ with Mamaleek, Traindodge
* with Mamaleek, thirdface
+ with Gouge Away, Nightosphere
~ with Nightosphere
