{"title":"Flenser","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"chat-pile-cool-world","title":"Chat Pile 'Cool World'","description":"\u003cp\u003eLike the towering mounds of toxic waste from which it gets its namesake, the music of Oklahoma City noise rock quartet 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 struck 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBesides being the name of a largely forgotten (and panned) 90s film, \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e 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. “\u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough 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 \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e 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 \u003cem\u003eGod’s Country\u003c\/em\u003e to still capture the immediate, uncompromising essence of Chat Pile, we also knew that with \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e, 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, \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe proverbial thread tying all of the experimentation on \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e together is the depth to which Chat Pile dissects the album’s theme of violence. Whether it be the cycle of creating and passively consuming literal and figurative violence on sister tracks “Camcorder” and “Tape”, the diminishment of crimes against humanity by way of foreign policy and colonialism on “Shame”, or the mental anguish of hopelessness on “The New World”, \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e is an apocalyptically bleak record. 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 \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e 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. In film terms, think something like a Criterion arthouse film by way of schlocky grindhouse splatterfest: undeniably gratuitous and thrilling in the moment but leaving a looming dread in the back of one’s mind for how close the horrors depicted mirror reality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“If I had to describe the album in one sentence,” explains Busch, “It’s hard not to borrow from Voltaire, so I won’t resist – \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e is about the price at which we eat sugar in America.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeond pressing on Emerald Green Cloudy vinyl and Neon Green vinyl. Third pressing on Highlighter Yellow vinyl. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll images are digital mock-ups  — the final product may appear differently. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Flenser","offers":[{"title":"Highlighter Yellow","offer_id":47881436332203,"sku":null,"price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/1642\/3595\/files\/chat-pile-cool-world-lp-pre-order-46308928356647_300x_8b9a5603-5f9a-4b9d-9ffd-83689aebf62f.avif?v=1789683884"},{"product_id":"chat-pile-gods-country","title":"Chat Pile 'God's Country'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere’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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving 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 its debut LP. 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 out via The Flenser.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn just a couple of years, Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile has made nothing short of a profound impression on the underground music discourse. Formed in the spring of 2019 by Raygun Busch (vocals), Luther Manhole (Guitar), Stin (Bass), and Captain Ron (Drums), the noise-rock quartet would release two EPs that same year, titled This Dungeon Earth and Remove Your Skin Please respectively. Spurred on by both a hearty run of live performances and a swiftly growing online fanbase, Chat Pile became a staple name among its genre contemporaries thanks to its hellish synthesis of noise rock, sludge, industrial, and mid 90’s nu-metal. In 2020, the band would sign with San Francisco underground music label, The Flenser, to put out its upcoming full length debut. That following year, Chat Pile kept its roll going, with accolades including composing the score for the indie film, Tenkiller, as well as releasing a 7” split with portrayal of guilt in the summer. Despite its creation only a couple of years ago, Chat Pile has already played alongside a number of acclaimed underground acts, including Street Sects, portrayal of guilt, Psychic Graveyard and Distorted Pony.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNinth pressing available on\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eCitrine MD Blend Vinyl and Grimace Purple Vinyl (1,000 units each).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Flenser","offers":[{"title":"GRIMACE PURPLE","offer_id":47883077812395,"sku":"FR129v1","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/1642\/3595\/files\/chat-pile-god-s-country-lp-29244469379150_5000x_7e08bf3b-0daf-47fa-9c0c-0339ec6b1b85.jpg?v=1789696267"},{"product_id":"chat-pile-who-loves-the-sun","title":"Chat Pile 'Who Loves the Sun'","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn a world increasingly shaped by disposable content, Chat Pile answers with something defiantly real and organic, a mentality that permeates \u003cem\u003eWho Loves The Sun\u003c\/em\u003e, their third full-length record.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince the band's formation just over six years ago, the Oklahoma City-based quartet Chat Pile has grown from a scrappy passion project into one of the defining heavy acts to emerge from the 2020s underground. Ray B. (vocals), L. Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass), and Cap’n Ron (drums) create a crushing, crass, and cathartic take on noise rock that captures a raw, undeniably human essence in an age marked by technological overreach and the cold state of society. Nothing about \u003cem\u003eWho Loves The Sun \u003c\/em\u003efeels synthetic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhereas their debut album \u003cem\u003eGod’s Country\u003c\/em\u003e depicted a particularly American flavor of dread, and the follow up \u003cem\u003eCool World\u003c\/em\u003e showed a cruel planet defined by global systemic violence, \u003cem\u003eWho Loves The Sun\u003c\/em\u003e peels the skin back on how collective indifference defines this new century. Spanning imagery of coastlines devouring cities, dead-end jobs, and submission to data-driven inauthenticity, the album dissects the apathy-bloated state of 21st-century existence as a slow-motion apocalypse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs with much of Chat Pile’s work, Oklahoma City itself looms over the album like a character, its sprawling isolation, economic contradictions, and underlying sense of decay embedded in the fabric of the record. The perfect allegory for the thematic essence of \u003cem\u003eWho Loves The Sun\u003c\/em\u003e is the photo embossed on the record’s cover, where Devon Tower, a glassy, largely vacant monolith, looms high above the Oklahoma City skyline while a burnt-out home or storefront envelops the foreground.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe album remains lyrically and sonically confrontational, but Chat Pile approached the songwriting with hooks in mind, drawing on melodic tones of pre-2000s indie rock, alt-rock, and new wave. From the blood-soaked vocal passages of “Christabel ‘26” to the eerie trip-hop pulse of “Same Rules,” \u003cem\u003eWho Loves The Sun\u003c\/em\u003e is deeply human despite its allusions to a dying, divided world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Flenser","offers":[{"title":"BLACK","offer_id":47890223136939,"sku":null,"price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/1642\/3595\/files\/chat-pile-who-loves-the-sun-lp-pre-order-1240812173_5000x_3589513f-d0b7-4b55-90b7-2046d922f23b.jpg?v=1789748450"}],"url":"https:\/\/iodinerecords.com\/collections\/flenser.oembed","provider":"Iodine Recordings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}