Chat Pile - Cool World (2024) Hi-Res

Exquisite misery with a side of laughs from the sludge/nu metal/indie hybrid. Chat Pile’s sludgy mix of nu metal and ’90s underground rock isn’t anything new, but it’s hard to imagine it existing so comfortably at any other time. Part of it’s their willingness to traverse what in another era would’ve been uncrossable cultural lines: Pledging your allegiance to the funny, post-punk surrealism of a band like Pere Ubu (“Camcorder”) at the same time as the single-entendre misery of Korn (“Funny Man”), for example. If metal is, on some level, guitar-country, Chat Pile is firmly set in its rhythm section, which is as rumbling and inescapable as the power lines and strip-mined hills of the Middle America outside their window, leaving the guitars primarily to peel paint. Where guys this misanthropic might’ve been considered social liabilities in their past (or at least dangers to their parents and church youth group), now they sound content to stay in their rooms and pig out on memes about the world they’ve always known was in ruin. “Tape” is the peak here not because it’s the hardest but because it’s the funkiest, whatever funk means to bands like this. Forget alienation—they’re laughing.

Since the release of 2020's God's Country, Chat Pile seemed destined to set the world on fire—whether that fire is literal or metaphorical remained the question. Over noisy riffs that borrowed from '90s alt, sludge, hard rock and metal, the Oklahoma quartet presented a litany of plainspoken lyrics meant to poke the bear while also making fun of it. Like Shakespearean fools, they point out the foibles of kings and laugh, masking deeper emotion with hokeyness. It's easy to be dismissive, but the best part about Chat Pile is that the joke is on all of us—including them.

If God's Country was mistaken for being tongue-in-cheek, Cool World now wags the very same tongue, with Chat Pile drawing again from '90s influences as they deride their surroundings. "Funny Man" begins with a Pantera-like riff before the churlish lyrics invoke a breakdown to Primus-like playfulness: "I broke my knees upon the pearl and onyx/ In the hall of trophies built to honor my father" before the scream-along chorus "Outside, there's no mercy." It's self-effacing and wily while acknowledging the pressure to do the bidding of society. This is Chat Pile at their most effective: know the world and know the pain the world wishes to heap upon you. "Camcorder" sounds like their most gothic and serious song yet, an admission that they have watched the world burn, while confessing they want to watch it burn again. The brooding "Tape" wouldn't seem out of place scoring an anti-hero's transformation on the soundtrack to The Crow (1994).

The brutal final moments of "The New World"—a festival of feedback and distortion stopping just short of being a hardcore breakdown—sets Chat Pile apart from typical '90s rock worship. It leads into "Masc," a raging, youthful fire that examines self-doubt and inner anguish. "I know I'm lower than scum/ I need to keep my mouth shut/ Before I look fuckin' dumb" sounds cringey but the delivery sells it so well. By the time we get to "No Way Out" with its Handsome-esque riff, the deadening of souls is complete: "From the time you were born it was over." So is the time for frivolity; the moment for ending pointless self-awareness is now upon us. It's the dawn of an improved Chat Pile. They may set themselves on fire before they ever get to worrying about the world again and those who cast stones at their silliness may burn alongside them.