Hey, everyone. Coolthony Guytano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Chat Pile album, Cool World.

This is the second full-length album from Oklahoma City natives, Chat Pile, a band that in a few short years has become one of the most interesting and thoughtful in all of heavy underground music. Back in 2019, when they were first starting to create a buzz, some promising EPs eventually ended up snowballing into a fantastic debut album, God's Country in 2022.

And that is a record where you could say the band really came to us fully formed with some heavy, absolutely juggernaut sludge metal riffs delivered with a raw noise rock sensibility. Think classic acts such as Melvins or Acid Bath or even Harvey Milk. That's roughly Chat Pile's sound.

However, we cannot forget about the lyrical content, which is where I think a lot of that trademark Chat Pile magic lies, as the words nestled in Chat Pile songs are often quite harrowing and delivered in a way to where they have immediate impact within the context of the music itself. You're not necessarily having to head over to a lyrics sheet to see what the band is going on about, because through cleanly-sung vocals, spoken-word passages, and screams and shrieks where the lyrics stay surprisingly intelligible, the band makes their creative intentions behind a lot of their tracks very clear, which was especially the case on God's Country, which confronted listeners with the horrors of addiction and self-loathing and food processing plants, as well as homelessness and completely freakish mental psychotic breaks. The things dreams are made of.

But really early on in their career, Chat Pile has proven themselves to be just so good at taking these dejected and fed up feelings and turning them into an absolutely visceral sound. And given the consistency of the band's art and branding around this new LP here, I expected them to just give us more of the same. And truth be told, Cool World is the sound of a band that is very well aware of who they are, how they appeal, and they are just fully leaning into that and adding on to it a a little bit in the process.

I mean, the opening track, "I Am Dog Now", which I remember was the first single to the album, is just pretty much the band sticking to what they do best. Grinding riffs that sound like heavy machinery, malfunctioning on a factory floor, underscored by twisted cords and attached to these haunting refrains that are delivered through this seething animalistic vocal delivery. "I am dog now!" Again, same Chat Pile formula, same Chat Pile punch, but with a few additional song structure changes and manic guitar embellishments to keep things interesting.

In line with keeping things interesting, we also have the strangely hooky "Shame" following this, which has some oddly smooth and simple melodic hooks that are reminiscent of Nirvana a bit, which are then contrasted later in the track with some very gruff death metal style growls, which are pulled off very well, which... it's just great to hear a band that balances such a wide variety of extreme influences.

We hear a bit more Nirvana worship as well on the following track, "Frownland", whose opening riffs and grooves feel a lot like something from the In Utero era, namely the song "Scentless Apprentice", but if you could bring it to a heavier, more metal-infused conclusion. As interesting as it is to hear Chat Pile pull this off, it doesn't necessarily make up for the lack of a standout lyrical angle on this track.

Following this, though, the track "Funny Man" was another standout single from the record, which I think has a lot more variety and substance to it. There are contrasting vocal deliveries and guitar passages across the track. Lyrically, I like how this song explores these feelings of desperation around giving yourself, your life, and your body to something just because those before you and your family did, and then also seeing the same for your children down the road into the future.

Deeper into the record, we have more highlights as well that just add to the overall horrors of the album. There's "Tape", which I have to give it to for having the most versatile array of guitar passages across the song. Here, the band manages to create something that is as grim and as nasty and as stark as anything from their last record. But simultaneously, from a musical and a guitar work perspective, it's certainly a more complex track with more color to it as well. Not to mention, there are at least two different repeating passages of music and lyrics across the track that sound like hooks in and of themselves.

Meanwhile, the track "The New World" is pretty much an ode to the cruel, awful, unforgiving world that we live in, which issSomething that generally I feel like a lot of Chat Pile songs point to the idea of. But in the case of this track, it's more of a general anthem in tribute to this idea. So yeah, not only is the track about this world, but it's also about people being dragged into it against their will with an ending that sonically sounds as punishing as the lyrics themselves.

There's also "Mask" on the record, which was another standout single, a track that is less about masculinity literally, and more about the fear of judgment and insecurity that comes with having to bottle things up about yourself, hide things about yourself in order to keep in line with some societal expectation or gender mold. Of course, this is attached to an absolutely enchanting and frightening series of hooks and riffs finalized with animalistic screams of "It's your world!"

To top things off on the record, we have a very strong closer as well with "No Way Out", which ties things up with some themes that were pretty much explored earlier on the album with "The New World", as this song, once again, is generally about the world we're living in today. Although rather than being dragged into it, instead, we're discussing being born into it with hopes and dreams and aspirations that slowly get snuffed out and crushed once you've realized that the place you're existing in is a prison that there's really no escape from, and it's all, of course, built on lies and a lack of time. Pretty much expected Chat Pile to give us something about that grim.

Overall, though, I will say I feel like the one thing this record is missing is a track that, like from God's Country, really pulls into a deep, dark, lengthy, unforgiving abyss. Of course, I'm talking about a track like a "grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg", which is truly a traumatizing track from the last record. Even the lengthiest track on this LP, "Camcorder", I feel like spends a lot of its run time hanging around middle ground sonically and emotionally. It really doesn't do enough with the mood and tension that it builds for most of its duration.

By comparison, I think "Milk of Human Kindness" does a much better job of doing something interesting with its run time. It does feature this cool, slowly intensifying progression of sorts. The payoff is most certainly there, but there is also a lack of instrumental and lyrical risks being taken on this track in particular, as I think it does sound like something that could have landed on the last record, but would have failed to even stand out among those tracks tracks if it did happen to be sitting shoulder to shoulder with them.

I guess if I have a general issue at all with Cool World, it's that, as Chat Pile really could have spent more time broadening their sound on this record. That leaves Cool World feeling a little bit like a sequel to God's Country in a way, which despite those complaints, I think is a move that there are more pros to than cons, as this record is still filled with great riffs, killer performances, heavy, heavy, heavy heavy, heavy, crushing production, just impenetrably dark content.

The band definitely wrote some of their most explosive and catchy material to date on this thing. The band continues to be one of the most psychologically thrilling in all of heavy music today, which is why I'm feeling a decent 8 on this record.

Anthony Fantano. Chat Pile. Forever.