Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you are doing well. We are doing a live Zoom meeting-type conversation with the boys in the wonderful Oklahoma City band Chat Pile and their latest record, Cool World. (I almost said "Cruel World," though it is reflective of that, too.) It came out a little while ago, but I recently crossed paths with the band over at Primavera Sound. We did a quick little talk over there, and for whatever reason, they decided they wanted to talk to me twice. Maybe they have a bone to pick with me or something, and they really wanted to get it out of the way — do a bit of a follow-up like, "Anthony, we feel like that went terribly. We want to take you to task here on it!" But look, I think these guys are one of the most exciting bands in the underground right now, and I thought it would be great to go over their latest record with them, just all of the positive reception that album has seen, and anything else that comes up in the conversation.

AF: Off the bat, I appreciate you guys taking the time. Thanks for coming through.

Stin: Yeah, thanks for having us!

AF: I feel like I have to ask this because it is my own personal point of interest here, and I forgot to bring it up when we were talking. Is there a chance at some point I can get a hold of a Captain Ron Chat Pile hockey jersey? Because that jersey is fucking sick, and I was taken aback to not see it in person when we were there at Primavera Sound, because that's got to be one of the sickest, most amazing top 10 pieces of band merch I've seen in the last several years, and I feel like I got to get my hands on one!

Stin: Well get this: we looked into making more of them, and they have raised the price of the blank jersey by 60% or something. So they've become actually unaffordable for us to make new ones at the moment.

AF: Is this a tariff thing?

Captain Ron: That was from Canada, so maybe.

AF: So another reason to hate Trump is what we're saying?

Stin: Yeah, absolutely.

Luther Manhole: It's that the Chat Pile jerseys are now $400 or whatever. It's crazy.

AF: So because of Republicans, Chat Pile hockey jerseys are now unattainable for the average person. You've basically got to be a billionaire to own one.

Stin: Yeah, that's right. If you own one already, you truly have a collector's item now, because who knows if we'll be able to make these again.

LM: We've printed up probably what, 20 to...

Stin: I think it's been probably closer to 40 at this point.

CR: Yeah, something like that.

LM: We see them at shows occasionally, and they're always the true heads for sure. If someone has a jersey on, I'm like, 'I will indulge all your questions, my friend. You can punish the shit out of me; I don't care. You have the jersey.'

AF: Yeah. I feel like it really makes you guys special. The only relevant music act that I can think of that's really killing it on — and you can correct me if I'm wrong — the Hockey Jersey merch front is like, [Insane Clown Posse]. With every new run of merch, I feel like ICP has 2-3 sick hockey jerseys, like Jersey pieces of merch. And it's like, I feel like more artists and bands out there, maybe outside of the hardcore scene, could be doing that thing, and you guys are doing it. It's like, holy shit! So I mean, hopefully it becomes more affordable in the near future — for you guys to come back to that.

LM: I hope so!

Stin: I had a White Zombie hockey jersey in high school, and I always coveted the Sepultura one. That was the other one that you would see back then.

LM: I just can't believe it because Ron plays in it every single show, and it'll be like...We'll play a fest, and it's 100 degrees outside. I don't know how you do it. Truly braver than the troops, Captain Ron.

AF: Especially with him doing it while drumming, too.

LM: Yeah, no, it's crazy to me.

AF: I've always appreciated with band pictures, the devotion that he has rocking it because it almost makes him like, the band mascot, you know? Because I feel like for people who maybe have seen the logo in passing, they might see you guys and be like, "What's this band? Who are these guys?" But then they see him in the jersey and it's like, "Oh, okay. Chat Pile's mascot is there. So they must be Chat Pile."

LM: Yeah, "These guys like to have a little fun!"

CR: Heavily influenced by John Fishman from the band Phish, haha!

LM: The pan-down...! And Danny Perry, he does basketball jerseys, right? He's more of a basketball jersey guy.

CR: I'm still waiting for the day when, you know, cities or whatever will just give me hockey jerseys of whatever city we're playing in. That's the true dream.

AF: So we're not rocking the Chat Pile merch. It's Phish merch.

CR: That's right!

AF: Okay. Killer. I feel like this is a good time to maybe transition to some of the... Maybe what some people might read is the unlikely influences of the band, especially musically. I feel like — and obviously this is the case — when people are writing about or discussing your music for the most part, I think what comes up first in discussions are a lot of the post-hardcore and noise rock influences, be that like a Melvins or an Albini, that sort of thing. But I feel like, in the wake of a lot of that coverage and also interviews that you guys have done, and efforts you've made to discuss your musical influences and celebrate them (especially Stin), there are these nu metal connections that I feel like maybe more music snob-types might not necessarily bring up or pick up on. Because I think a lot of people see 2000s or late-90s -era metal music, especially some of those rap fusions, as a cultural red herring. Like, it happened, we look back upon it with shame, and we don't talk about it or bring it up because it's cringe, and it's terrible, and it should have never happened. But you're out here being like, "No, man, Korn fucking rules, and Fieldy inspires me, and it's connected to my bass playing!"

Stin: Well, I would maybe agree with most people in that. I think a lot of that stuff is terrible. I think the turn of the century is a really low point for culture in general, especially post-9/11, obviously, and all that. But my main argument is that I think for the most part, there are three–to–four good nu metal bands...But that's like any genre, right? It's like, whether it's thrash, or noise rock, or anything in that world, it's like you have four–to–five great bands, and then a lot of the worst music you've ever heard in your life. But Korn is the one I go to bat for. They're my favorite band of all time. In fact, I met Monkey at Hellfest—

AF: Yeah, I saw that picture!

Stin: Dude, it was one of the best moments of my life and also terrifying! I was shaking talking to him because I was so fucking nervous. And then when it was done, it was almost like being in a car wreck or something, where you're trying to reacclimate yourself to a real life and you're just full of adrenaline and stuff. So yeah, that was a really big moment for me, that happening.

Raygun Busch: He was nice! He was like, "What's up, guys? This is my son here!"

Stin: He could not have been nicer.

RB: Yeah, yeah, he was cool.

AF: I feel like if you're a Korn fan, you probably have differing opinions on...maybe artistically, when the band started to fall off. I remember loving back in the day Follow the Leader, fucking with some tracks on Issues, and then after that, not really being a huge fan of a lot of what the band did after. Where's the cut-off point for you with Korn? What's the Korn debate among the band — the Korn assessment among the band?

LM: Before you start, I will just say I think Stinn is both the best person and most insane person to answer this question. He's the most knowledgeable, but you give them so much leeway to a point when you're like, "They are bad," I'm like, 'You are insane that you think that's it."

RB: He was standing up for that white album with the crow, the mechanical crow. He was like, "There are some good songs on that!"

AF: How unashamed are we talking about here? Are we in the car playing the Fred Durst/Jonathan Davis diss track to each other? And we're like, "Guys, listen to these bars, guys! Listen to these bars!"

Stin: I will say no. Well, okay the beginning of that song: I would say the riff at the beginning is excellent.

AF: The riffs are crazy. It's true. The riffs are crazy.

LM: But yeah, that song is terrible.

Stin: To answer your question: I fuck with every album to some extent. And then obviously, some are better than others. The golden era is Self-Titled to Take a Look in the Mirror. And then what happens is Head leaves the band, and they go through this lost period, which would be See You on the Other Side, which, in my opinion, is their worst album, up until The Paradigm Shift when Head comes back. And then you have this third arc of their career, which is the "Head Reunion" era, which we're in right now. But I would say, dude, if you've only messed with a couple of songs on Issues? Issues is a perfect ten record.

LM: Yeah, it's my favorite by them for sure.

Stin: It's produced by Brendan O'Brien. It has this amazing, woody production to it. It just sounds like a band actually playing their instruments. And I would say that's the biggest flaw with the latter period of their careers, especially that last album that they put out, Requiem. It just sounds like laptop music. It just doesn't have that natural feel. Although I've been seeing reports that the new album they're recording currently is going to be on two-inch tape, and that they're actually doing live takes and stuff. So, holding that hope for that one.

RB: It's got to have some good songs.

Stin: That's true. Well, that's the thing with Korn, though — is that they always do have good songs. What they get in the way of themselves with is usually production choices. And the production choices sometimes are so bad that it actually steps on what could be a fantastic song. Something that's happened since The Paradigm Shift is they can't get away from infusing these electronic elements into their music, which I think is not necessarily the smartest idea for them.

AF: Are we talking here like, these are like residuals from the dubstep era?

Chat Pile: Yes!

Stin: But it's even before then, because See You on the Other Side is produced by The Matrix, which is like a pop production team. It sounds like it; they do like Hilary Duff records and stuff, and that's where that whole thing starts. And they don't ever really get away with it, with a handful of exceptions. So that would be my first production tip. And then, yeah, probably just playing in a room together live would be the other tip I would give them on that...But it's not for me to tell the best band on Earth what to do.

AF: I feel like as somebody who's been a big fan of their music at some point — and I'm sure you have opinions on this, too — I feel like you can't quite just discuss Korn from a musical standpoint. I feel like there has to be a philosophical analysis of the band as well, especially in the wake of all of these more recent eras where you're seeing this born-again ethos coming from members like Monkey and Fieldy and so on and so forth. What's your take on that? I remember being a kid and thinking this band as such a going against the grain of a lot of the social conservatism and religious rot that I thought was going on in society at the time when I was a teenager. And then years later, I'm seeing one of the guys jamming with Mike Huckabee while Mike Huckabee is on bass on his talk show. I was like, what the fuck? It feels like we've arrived at a very weird place.

Stin: Yeah. Well, it's really complicated because to your earlier statement: yes, they come along at a time when... Okay. So, alternative music around the time that Korn shows up, up until that point had been this American underground indie rock thing that had been blown up by Nirvana and signed by all these big labels, and it was just a huge part of the culture, right? But all that's marcated by the punk rock ethos and the left political awakening and all this stuff. But then in '94, there's this sea change in alternative rock, where all of a sudden you get this "darkness for darkness' sake" aesthetic. So you have bands like Korn, Tool comes to mind, Nine-Inch Nails. So all of a sudden, there's this shift, and it does have this anti-family values, anti-religious sentiment to it, but not a whole lot else. There's not really much else going on there.

AF: Yeah, I mean, there was the Family Values tour. The whole aesthetic was to poke fun at that mindset.

Stin: I consider it "rebellion for rebellion's sake," or however you want to see it. But then these guys get rich. That's always a problem with people's values and whatnot, right? But then in Head's case: so he's the one who jammed with Mike Huckabee, and his story is interesting because the band, for the most part, is collectively doing meth from the beginning. And as each album goes on, more and more members get sober. But he's the last man out, and his meth problem gets so bad by the time that he quits the band, that skinheads are coming up to his house, trying to kill members of his family because of drug deals gone bad. And he's going through these insane bouts of paranoia and probably some type of mental break, I would assume. And so because of the drugs, because of the mental issues, he jumps into this religious fervor that only someone going through that type of internal struggle would do. And in those events, he ends up making all these... He goes broke because he makes investments with all these shady, religious real estate people and—

AF: I didn't know you dove this deeply into this. I didn't expect this.

LM: It's historian levels with this.

Stin: But in the background, while he's off doing his thing, Fieldy is the one who also becomes extremely religious, empowered by the success that he's seeing in Head's life at this time. So they're the two Evangelical members of the band, and Fieldy is actually not in the band anymore at this current state.

AF: Yeah, that's right.

Stin: Yeah, he's out. So the one guy who has held steadfast to his beliefs from beginning to end is Jonathan Davis. He is not a religious guy. He's openly non-religious, and I actually think it's beautiful that they can keep this band of bros together where you got crazy Head over here being super religious, you got Fieldy being super religious, you got Monkey not caring about anything, and then Jonathan being a hardcore, teenage atheist or whatever. It's awesome.

AF: Right! And notably, you have bands like System of a Down who haven't really been able to overcome the divides personally and artistically that they've had over the years.

Stin: That divide is weirder, though, because the drummer is just a complete right-wing freak, right?

AF: Right.

LM: It's so overtly political. It just seems like it would have come up before now, but I don't know...Yeah, that's a very strange one to me.

AF: Comparatively, what divides do you guys feel like you're having to overcome personally to keep Chat Pile going? Aside from, obviously...I mean, I don't know how in the tank all of you are for Phish, or if it's just Captain Ron.

LM: I'd say it's mainly Ray and Ron.

RB: I like Phish.

LM: I'm Phish-tolerant, I would say. I'm not fully ready to cross over into saying I like them or listening to them.

Stin: They've opened my mind, too because we get exposed to it in the van now. And like...I like fusion, and there's that element of Phish, and so that keeps me hooked into it. But, I don't know if I've made the full crossover yet.

AF: I just came out yesterday as feeling like the band has the best Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, which I feel like is something everybody should be able to bond over.

LM: Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything truly divisive between the four of us...

AF: As far as what comes up on the aux when you're in the van?

LM: Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty vocally anti-Metallica, and the rest of the guys I think are into Metallica. But even then, I don't know! I'm trying to think if there's anything.

Stin: Here's the thing...All of us soften on our hard stances because we just force each other to listen to the bullshit we like, and then eventually people are like, "All right, fine. This is okay. It's not as bad as I thought it once was."

LM: I was saying to the van on our last tour. I was like, 'You know what, guys? AC/DC is sounding better to my ears these days!' But I used to probably think they were one of my least favorite bands. But we've just listened to it. It comes up, we have a big playlist, or something will get brought up, and we'll just listen to a full album in the van or something. I'm like, I don't know! "For Those About to Rock" goes fucking insane. That song is awesome!

AF: No, I've felt similar experiences because I think going into college is when I had my most staunch music opinions, and then being the music director and general manager of a college radio station for several years and having to deal with everybody's music opinions at all times opened me up to things that I don't think I would have heard otherwise. These days, I'm much more of a... I mean, maybe some people would disagree from the looks of some of my reviews and the reactions to them, but I'm much more of a poptimist than I think I ever was when I was younger, whereas I just wouldn't tolerate a lot of top 40 stuff at all. Now I feel like I have a bit of a balance to where I can enjoy both the underground and the mainstream at the same time and get something out of it.

Stin: I just feel like I'm at an age where I just don't believe that any music is objectively bad or perfect or whatever. I realized the power of subjectivity, and so it's hard for me to just take a hard stance on anything. I'm sure there are probably songs by bands I think I hate that I would like if I just got the right exposure to it, or if I had the right experiences with it, or whatever. I don't know. It's just hard for me to draw a line in the sand anymore with anything.

AF: Yeah, like Lorde. I mean, you've just heard the one "Jimmy Crack Corn" song, which you're okay with. But if you heard more tracks, you might be more open. Yeah, exactly.

RB: I mean, knowledge is power, as the old saying goes. At some point in my 20s, where I was like, 'Enough being hip and stuff; I need to know about Fleetwood Mac and shit.' I know Fleetwood Mac is very cool now, but it wasn't cool 20 years ago or whatever. Tusk used to be $5 everywhere.

AF: No, it's true!

RB: Before people realized that it's such an important record.

AF: No, it's absolutely true. We're in the same age range, and it's interesting to see what artists from the '80s or '90s, which maybe had the peaks of their careers in the '60s and '70s, which would have been legacy acts by that time that we were coming into music. And just later down the road, we're getting this critical reevaluation from Zoomers and people who are younger. Like, "Actually, this is really sick!" And it's like, when we were getting into cool music when I was young, nobody was having discussions about fucking Steely Dan. I don't know if you guys disagree, but among-

RB: No, I'm with you!

LM: That's something like a past 10 years thing. Seemingly everyone loves Steely Dan. There's a lot of that, though, that you see where it's like, bands that are now seemingly classic bands that are genre defining and stuff. It's like...I don't remember anyone talking about some of this stuff years ago. I don't know.

RB: Me and my buddies, we felt like true explorers listening to like, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, and all sorts of weird shit like that.

AF: All right. I wanted to get into a little bit — not so much the musical or ideological divides among the band — maybe more about what unites you guys because musically and thematically, there's so much cohesiveness across everything that you guys have put out so far. Especially with your last two albums, I wanted to discuss some of the imagery that you guys attach to your music, be it some of the music videos or the cover art that you put onto your albums. I wanted to know what the source or direction for this is. I think the message reads pretty clear. It seems like you guys are trying to comment on some societal rot or bleakness in modern American society that you see around you where you're from. I see Captain Ron's chilling by the pool there, which seems pretty nice, frankly. But I mean, what is it about that setting, or vibe, or the Oklahoma City area, the surrounding towns there, that inspired you to be like, "We need to blast this out there and make this what represents the band?"

Stin: I think for me, it's just one of those things where we've all lived more or less our whole lives. It's that whole frog in the boiling pot of water analogy, where you just day-to-day live your life, and so much to where you ignore the reality of your surroundings. And in Oklahoma City, in particular, it's easy to do because you have to drive a car everywhere, which has a tendency to disconnect you from the physical reality around you. And I think just at a certain point one day, I just started noticing just the physical rot around us. And when you get tapped into that, it's hard to ignore it, especially in a place like this that has a lot of that. It's just all concrete strip malls. And I don't know, there's something powerful about that that I felt like I wanted to capture in our visuals as much as possible. And the thing is, it's easy to do here because there's endless amounts of subject matter to pull from. There are endless photos to take. There are endless video to capture. I mean, there's a lot to love about Oklahoma City, but there's a lot to dislike as well.

AF: Is this also like something you'd say that you're trying to convey something like the "Funny Man" video, for example? It's just this very specifically middle American brand of destitution that seems to be getting exemplified through all the video clips in that video.

Stin: Yeah, I mean, it's hard for us to take credit for the video side of things because with those, we tend to just let the directors do their own thing. We'll give them some advice and stuff. But hopefully, with that, I think maybe the message of our music is clear enough that these directors can take the just the raw material of the song and make those translations, and they sync up really well with our intended message.

AF: So building off of the message you're already putting out there, you're saying?

Stin: Yeah, exactly. So we can't take credit for that necessarily, but I guess other than just indirectly the music inspiring those images. But yeah, I love the "Funny Man" video. To me, what I like about that is it captures... There's always a hauntedness to the idea of your home when you're not in it, and the stillness that might exist there, and how that can be unsettling. I think that video captures that really well.

LM: I like that the people who do the videos get to do their own interpretation. Like Stin said, we'll give them some guidance, but a lot of the times, there's definitely multiple videos of ours where it's like—

RB: I met with that guy for a couple of hours talking about what we didn't want for that video.

LM: That's usually more what you'll do, right? It's more like, "This is what I don't want," rather than, "Do this!"

RB: There were only a couple of videos where we've had to do that. People we truly don't know — East Coast people that don't really understand the place.

AF: East Coast people! I know those people don't get it.

LM: Yeah. I want to New York-ify Oklahoma!

RB: I'll come into your house and tell you how to...

LM: The bigger problem we have are Europeans who try to do stuff for us. It always comes back so wrong because they just don't understand the true Americana aesthetic.

RB: There's probably some one-to-one country; we just haven't met it. It's not France, clearly.

LM: There's got to be an Oklahoma of Europe, right? Somewhere?

AF: I was actually going to say, you guys have just spent a fair bit of time touring through Europe. And I wanted to ask if in your experience, obviously, touring and performing, you're just getting small slice of wherever it is that you're playing shows. But still, when you were out there, did you see the type of societal rot that your music and the visuals often speaks to? Is there a universality to that at all? Have you been finding that in other ways or in other places that you've been?

Chat Pile: No!

AF: It just seems very unique to where you are.

Stin: Yeah. I mean, maybe a little bit in the UK. I think they get it for sure. Yeah, but mainly in Europe, no, dude, they don't understand. Not to say they don't have their own problems they have to contend with, but it's different than what's going on in the middle of America.

LM: I don't think we went anywhere that I would say is worse than where we live currently. I mean, there's stuff that I love about Oklahoma City more than other places that we've traveled to. But I mean, yeah, we live in a pretty ugly place.

RB: Well, that's I think all of America is ugly, though! I just wanted to go on record. Europe is more beautiful. I mean, Spain, take me away! I want to live in Madrid tomorrow. But all of America is ugly, and Canada also. I'm lumping you in with us. Horrible mistakes.

LM: Oh, yeah. Canada! Yeah. Lots of natural beauty in our continent, but the cities in general in...

RB: We're fucked!

LM: ...in America are just nightmares. Every town, every city. Because even the big cool cities now, there are copy-paste luxury condos everywhere just ruining the sky lines. I don't know, it's very strange.

AF: Wait, to rewind, that is something I did actually going into this want to ask about, because obviously there is a lot of, as I said, bleakness and rot represented in the music and the art that you guys present that's directly connected to your surroundings in Oklahoma. But I was curious if you could all collectively speak to some silver linings or positive things about where you got... What are some things that you actually enjoy about... If there is anything positive or nice to say?

RB: I think...about Oklahoma?

AF: Yeah!

LM: I think the food is legitimately great here. At least in the city itself, in OKC, it's not as white as the rest of the city. The state. There's lots of Central and South American immigrants here. I think Oklahoma per capita has the most Vietnamese people other than Texas and California in the United States. I don't know. There's lots of good food here, in my opinion. If you like weed, we're like the weed mecca right now for the US, which is crazy, even though it's just medical here. But I think the loose regulations have made it the Wild West here for that. And I don't know. I think all of us would agree that I never really felt... Growing up and going to shows here, it always felt like there were cool punk bands coming through and cool art. So there was never a moment when I was 14 or 15 and going to all these shows where I was like, 'Oh, man, I got to get out of here and get to a real city!' I was like, 'Man, I wish more people knew how cool these bands are that are here!'

Stin: So what a lot of people don't realize is that Oklahoma City is literally the crossroads of I-35 and I-40. So any band that is touring by van just will end up driving through Oklahoma City by force of nature. And because of that, a lot of indie bands, smaller bands throughout my entire lifetime have stopped here, and I've seen some incredible shows because of it. So we have never lacked a good music scene here because it's just always an active thing. We have a great art community, DIY scene. It's just been that way my whole life out here. So that part of it is really great. And it's extremely cheap to live here, too, which is part of why we're able to do this full-time. If we were experiencing the level of success that we are experiencing now but lived in Los Angeles, we'd all still have day jobs, but we can afford to do this full-time now because we live in one of the cheapest places on Earth.

LM: Yeah. I mean, most of the negative stuff about here is just state politics stuff — just the political stuff. And yeah, just the blight and decay... and the weather! Yeah, some of the worst weather.

RB: I like the weather, personally.

LM: Yeah. I mean, I like the rain.

RB: We get all extremes; we get it all. We get a lot of good rain. I like the heat. I mean, I've worked outside a lot. I don't know. I'm just like, part of the... The extremity of the weather makes me who I am.

LM: I mean, I'm from the part of town that's been—

RB: The wind and shit!

CR: The wind is cool. I like it.

AF: Extremities: are we talking about tornadoes? Floods?

RB: Yeah. It gets super hot, and then it will get horrible ice that will destroy our city.

CR: Like, truly. Yeah, it'll just be like 25-30 miles per hour of winds, randomly.

RB: It's biblical shit; I like it!

Stin: It builds character, and it's definitely a part of our identity here because if you live in Oklahoma, you know who all the weather reporters are, and you tune in every spring and watch all the storm coverage. It's definitely a big part of being in Oklahoma.

LM: Yeah. My hometown of Moore, Oklahoma, which is the Southern suburb of OKC: the only things we're famous for is that Toby Keith is from there, and we've been hit by two F5 tornadoes. The elementary school I went to was completely destroyed in 2013 by an F5. It's definitely something that is like...Everyone here has very strong opinions about weather and weather coverage. I mean, the National Weather Service, even though it's being defunded right now, is based here in Norman, where the University of Oklahoma is and stuff. But yeah, a lot of the stuff....I mean, honestly, if we just had good public transit — any public transit — here, I don't know...

Stin: Any public transit!

LM: They just added a bus and sidewalks. A lot of the roads don't even have sidewalks. It's truly meant as a driver's city. And the roads are dog shit, so it's not even a good city to drive in. It's like you're just going to blow out your tires with potholes because it's a poor city. The things that you can do here culturally, I think, are good. It's like any city in the modern era. I mean, If you live here or Boston or wherever, it's like you're going to hang out with your friends, you're going to go to shows, you're going to go to good restaurants, you're going to go to a museum. I mean, I don't know. I think in the modern era, a lot of that stuff has evened out in most cities. But it really is just the political situation here that is such a nightmare that just brings everything down in a way.

AF: If you could speak to... Because I feel like there are so many people that are not aware or familiar with it in any way whatsoever. And you guys, for a lot of underground music fans, came out of nowhere being from Oklahoma City. What does the music scene look like currently? And what exactly do you guys attribute your ability to come up through it with it being so hardcore-based from what I understand and from there, not really... Obviously, there's a music scene there, but it's not like before Chat Pile, there were a million bands that sounded like what you guys do, so there was this major popular precedent for your sound. And at this point, you guys play venues there, and you're selling them out. So talk to that a little bit in terms of the musical makeup of the area and the reception for what you guys do out there, even though, historically, there hasn't been a million bands that sound like what you do.

Stin: Yeah. I mean, historically, the underground here is incredibly fractured. It does exist, and there's a scene of underground musicians. But because we are such a small city, it's not like, "Oh, there's 15 metal bands, and then there's 15 this." It's like, no, it's the same 200 people or so all hang out together. And this group is into shoegaze, and these five people have a punk band, and these six people have this, or whatever. So throughout the entirety of the time that I've been going to shows and stuff, there's never been a cohesive scene in terms of a sound or anything. The cohesion is more just by the very nature that you're willing to... The people. Yeah, the people that are involved, essentially. They're all doing their own thing, but they all know each other because it's like any port in a storm deal. And I would say that was the case all the way up until COVID happened. And then there was this great reset button hit, and when it came back, it was extremely hardcore-focused. So we're older, and all these people playing hardcore music are way younger than us. I would say that the experience that they're having is a lot different than our experience because everyone they know is making the same type of music. And there doesn't really seem to be as much fracturing. I would say there's also maybe a small shoegaze component to the scene here as well, but even in the broader sense of the world, those two scenes seem to be intermingled a little bit. So that's the makeup of it. And as far as how we're influenced by that or are influencing it, I don't know if there is a lot of cross-pollination because the four of us have been making music for 20 years in this city, and nobody has ever, ever cared about it. In fact, I would go as far as to say that at least the bands that Ron and I were in were hated because we were making Chat Pile music 15 years ago when that stuff couldn't have been less cool and nobody wanted anything to do with it. And then now, it's like, if the kids like Chat Pile, I'm not necessarily hearing it in the bands that they're making right now. I don't know. Can you think of anyone maybe that I'm not thinking of?

RB: I'm not super connected.

LM: Yeah, not really. I know Discern. They're doing the hardcore metal fusion stuff. But I know that they're a cool band. Everyone should check out Discern from Oklahoma City. But they've been playing a little noisy. I know their guitarist has told me that he is into my guitar stuff, and I can hear it. But still, yeah, it is minimal.

Stin: Any influence we have right now seems to be... I think maybe the influence is more like, "Hey, we can start a band in Oklahoma City and maybe be popular!" but it's not like, "Hey, we should sound like Chat Pile."

RB: That other band is way more influential. What's that? Creeping Flesh?

LM: Peeling Flesh. They're popping off for sure, and they're from here in Tulsa, the slam band.

RB: They're way more influential than we are locally.

AF: Well, maybe not influential in a direct musical sense, but is there at least, from what you guys have seen among the various music fans in the area, crossover appeal? I mean, obviously, it's different genres, it's different styles, but you're still both making, respectively, heavy music. Oh, yeah. It's quite cathartic.

Stin: I would say in that regard, there are definitely a lot of hardcore kids who would come to a Chat Pile show, most definitely.

LM: I think they're just stoked that it's our city. I even have felt this way in the past where it's like, I don't know. No one either even knows that this city exists, or we have a little brother complex with Texas and stuff. So it's just like, I think for a lot of people, it's like, "Oh, there's a band from here that people know? That's awesome. I'm going to like them." I think since we've been getting some notoriety at all, I think people just been, at least to me, seemingly very proud of us, even if it wouldn't be their thing.

CR: That's probably the... [unintelligble]

LM: You're roboting pretty crazy, man. Roboting hard.

AF: Couldn't really hear it.

Stin: I think what Ron's saying is essentially more than anything, people are just like, "We are so proud of you." That seems to be the gist. I feel less connected to the Oklahoma City scene, and I consider it as more part of a scene of the greater plains. It's like, yeah, it's like, Denton, Kansas City. That's more like what I've seen that I actually feel like we are literally a part of as opposed to just Oklahoma City itself. And even out there, parts of Austin, Texas in there, too. There are definitely bands that I feel some kinship with out there. But that, to me, is the scene right now. It's not necessarily OKC, specifically.

AF: I wanted to know if there's any Austin rivalry in terms of it being a music city going on or anything.

Stin: No, you just don't even consider it. I don't know, because they're just their own thing...And the thing, too, is Austin has become so corporatized and homogenized that it just doesn't mean the same thing that it used to even 10 years ago. That's not to say there aren't great bands out there, or there's not cool shit going on., but yeah, I don't know. I just don't even think of it in the same category, really.

LM: We end up playing there a lot because it's six hours away, so it's not super, super far. But it's like a lot of bands, if you're from here, you go down to Austin and play all the time. They just have such a big scene there and big venues and infrastructure for it. And you just end up playing with a ton of Texas bands being an Oklahoma band. There's just a lot of that.

AF: I feel like you guys spoke to this a little bit earlier, just in terms of talking about the place where you live and the affordability of it, making it even possible for you to be doing what you're doing full-time with Chat Pile. And all of you have been involved with music and have been in various bands for a long time up until this point. And I wanted to ask you if in your experience — being involved in the underground and all these bands and being able to see the success that you have seen with Chat Pile so far and having an intimacy and an understanding of the music industry in multiple different different eras — what do you feel are some of the challenges facing the band currently in something like the streaming era, where it seems like increasingly every year, regardless of what type of artist you are, you've got to be making music that's like, replayable and scales? And despite whether you're an underground or a mainstream artist, it seems like with everything being consumed on Spotify in the way that it is, that everything's being put along the same track, despite the fact that not all music appeals in the same way that a viral hit on Spotify might. Regardless of what music you make, it seems like everybody's being faced into the same metrics or appeal qualities. And I feel like I love seeing what you guys have been able to pull off so far because musically and artistically, it seems like you guys are going against the grain of all that. Maybe not consciously or purposefully, but it's just nice and heartening to see the success that you guys have had so far, despite the fact that it doesn't seem like you're interested at all in appealing in the same way that a lot of popular music might on TikTok or the music that gets easily playlisted on certain popular playlists on music streaming platforms.

Stin: I'm not interested in that bullshit at all. And in fact, if we had to bend over to make the algorithm work for us, I just wouldn't even want to do this. I just don't care. We went into this band with zero intention of anyone ever hearing it. We were just going to do it because that's just what we've done forever. And it just happened to get popular through strokes of luck or whatever. But I think something that I've noticed that is very special to me through becoming popular in this era is that it really seems like our fans have a really deep connection with the music that we're making for whatever reason. I think I would attribute that to the fact that we go against the grain so much and that we are doing our own thing and that we try to be as sincere with what we're doing as possible. We're not trying to game the system in any way. It's like, the amount of people who put weight on Spotify streaming numbers and stuff like that: it's like, our numbers might be low compared to some other bands that you see. Sometimes I'm shocked. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, this band has five million monthly listeners!' or whatever. 'Who's even heard of this before?' And you see that play out in real life. We're like, We'll go play a tour. And granted, maybe the theaters we're playing are on the smaller side, 300 to 600 cat venues, but we're selling them out every every single city we go to. And I think the reason for that is there's a real connection to our music as opposed to just some type of algorithmic playlist bullshit that has no connection to anybody. I don't know. I mean, it's hard to articulate in words what the difference is between us and maybe other bands, but I just like to think that we're not bullshitting anybody, and we just are who we are. And we're not trying to play some game. This could end tomorrow, and we could all go back to day jobs, and I'd be happy knowing that we never had to do anything. We didn't have to make a TikTok song or whatever.

LM: Yeah, we haven't had a viral song or anything, which is... I don't know. It's cool that we've been able to amass some amount of fan base, and people are getting tattoos of our music and stuff, and it's like we don't have some... I mean, maybe "Why" off of God's Country is the closest we've gotten to a specific song standing out to people like that. But all of us are fans of the album, the concept of the album. I want all the songs to thematically go together. In my opinion, our music is meant to be listened to an album from the first song to the last song. It's not really playlist music, in my opinion, which I listen to a lot of playlists on Shuffle and stuff, and I get it. But the way that we at least write the stuff, and we spend a lot of time thinking about track sequencing, how the songs go together and what makes sense. It's intended to all be listened to at once. And I think that is definitely... I mean, there's plenty of bands that still do that. But yeah, I think a lot of music right now is like, we have to have one song that blows up or something, and it has to go viral in some way.

Stin: It's such a stupid goal, too, because it's so short term.

LM: It's disposable, yeah.

Stin: Yeah, it's so disposable. It's like people, do you not realize how the Internet works? Something is huge for two days, and then it disappears into the wind, never to be heard of again. It's like, if you want any sustainability as an artist, you got to get away from trying to game the algorithm and the whatever! You've got to just make genuine connections with people. And I know that's an ethereal thing that you can't necessarily put metrics to, but that's just the fact of the matter. If you want to stick around and have any actual cultural value, I don't know. You can't be a one-hit wonder, two day, 15 minute of fame TikTok sensation. Yeah.

RB: Success is so hard to do. That shouldn't be your goal at all if you're doing this because you have to debase yourself a lot, too if you're just trying to get success only. You just got to be an artist and a real musician, and if success happens, you're blessed, I guess. That's it. And if it doesn't, it doesn't...You still maybe made great art, hopefully. If you work at it, you'll make good art. That's the real goal.

AF: Raygun, I'm sure you echo some of what Stin was saying there in terms of making a genuine connection there through what you guys are creating. But I'm sure for... How do you feel like you play into that, or how do you help achieve that yourself as a member of the band? Because I'm sure for a lot of casual and even hardcore listeners, with you bringing the prime message of the band through lyrics, most people are probably connecting with that first. Then they are going to what the guitar line is, or what the drum beat's doing, because not everybody's a musician going into these records, obviously. How do you feel like you're contributing to that necessity — being probably the first thing people are making a connection with in terms of the message or the ethos of the band? When you are going into a song, is it like, 'Okay, this is going to be the topic. That's going to be the topic. This is going to be the message I'm going to try to convey?'

RB: Well, I mean, honestly, I'm just trying to do a good job. I've been doing this for a long time, and I just want it to be good. I want it to be something I'd be proud of, that I wouldn't be embarrassed listening to. I want people to like it. I mean, occasionally, I'll be like, "I Am Dog Now": this is a slogan. This will stick in people's heads. "Send my body to Arby's" or something like that. I'm not going to act like there's no intention with that, but that's like pop songwriting. You want to have something that is catchy in some way. I don't know. But ultimately, I just want to do a good job and make it good. We don't have anybody telling us what to do, so I'm going to say what I want to say. We're really lucky. I would be remiss not to speak my mind politically, especially right now. I wish more bands...I do it so brazenly and boldly because I want other bands to be emboldened to do that. Hopefully, someday we'll see bigger bands, more important bands than us, saying real shit.

AF: No, I mean, there's definitely an element of it that we've been getting into that's political, and maybe this is also an extension of that, which I mean, if it is, you can draw that connection. But one of the things that I find most interesting about you as a writer is that you do seem to draw inspiration from so many disparate places. I think there are some lyricsists and songwriters out there who are pretty consistent in terms of what their emotional source material is a lot of the time. And with you, there are tracks where you're speaking to some great social horror that you feel like you're highlighting. And then conversely, there are tracks where you're like, "I'm just going to make this whole song a film reference point for a particular franchise or scene or plot line that I'm obsessed with." And again, maybe that extends out to some greater message for you, but sometimes it seems like there are a lot of different places that you're zoning in on on a given track.

RB: Yeah. I mean, I'm inspired by T.S. Eliot, who was a guy who'd write poetry pulling all these references from disparate places and combining them into something new — what he wanted to say, emotionally, or politically, or whatever. I'm not saying that I'm anything as good as T.S. Eliot—

AF: No, I thought you were saying you were as good as T.S. Eliot.

RB: No, I'm just inspired! I like The Waste Land. I just think he's... I've always just been inspired by that, by just being bold and just being like, 'I'm not going to explain what this is. I'm just going to toss all these...' "The Brutal Truth" is the most T.S. Eliot-ed out song, but it's 21st-Century trash compacting. I'm not talking about all these Greek mythology references and stuff like that. This is all garbage. But that's an inspiration for me, personally.

LM: There's just no rules to any of this stuff. We're allowed to do whatever we want to do. We're really lucky with being on an indie label like The Flenser as well. I know people in bands on other labels where they're being told, "Well, you have to make TikToks and stuff. You have to make this!" Or not necessarily. They're being told, "Your art has to have this content." But we really are very lucky in our position to where, yeah, we get essentially no notes on anything.

AF: That's shocking to hear. I'm surprised The Flenser...I thought they had a reputation as back-breakers. They're not calling you guys on the phone like, "Guys, we need a hit on this new record or the labels going under! We need a hit!"

LM: I mean, they've been a great home for us just because I think they — or at least Jonathan, who is the head guy over there — he just signs what he likes above all else. And even if other people or if anyone else...it's like, just if it speaks to him, he likes it. And so I know a lot of the other bands on the label, too...because we self-record. You could call us a bedroom band in that way, or it's like there's a lot of one-man band or bedroom projects that are... When we first signed The Flenser, we weren't touring full-time, and that was part of it, was we were like, "Yeah, we could do this, but we don't want any pressure from you on that. We have to go tour full-time." They're like, "Oh, no. Why? We never pressure any artist to do that." And that's been the case. All that stuff has just been... Any of the stuff of us wanting to do more like that has been from ourselves rather than them.

Stin: And on the flip side of that, too: anytime that we wanted to start doing stuff, Jonathan has been nothing but supportive and helpful. I mean, up until literally a couple of months ago, we've been doing this without any management whatsoever, and Jonathan has been essential in helping all of us navigate the in's and out's of what you have to do in the industry and stuff. None of us had ever toured extensively. We've never done a movie soundtrack before or any of that stuff. And he's been there to help us out every step of the way. So props to Jonathan and The Flenser.

LM: Yeah, even on stuff that's coming out in the future and stuff where it's like, even if stuff that isn't necessarily on the Flenser, he's just like, I don't know. They're just very supportive, even if you're... Because we're able to put out other stuff in other places, too, and they still help with that. So I think it just goes into the whole thing, where it's like we don't have someone being like, "Oh, well, that's a little too political there. Maybe rein that in." Or, "You have to have this type song." It's allowed us to have a lot of freedom because we're just going to make what we're going to make. If it stops being fun and stops being fulfilling, then I don't want to do it anymore. People have asked before, they're like, "Oh, how does it feel? You're like, You're living your dream." It's like, this was not my dream. I'm from Oklahoma City. I was just going to work a shitty job until I died. There was no reality in which... I'm just being truthful. It's like, there was no reality in which I thought it would ever be possible to do music or art full-time, period. It's so delusional to me that someone would go into this being like, "I'm going to do this full-time." I just don't even comprehend that. So it's like, anything that we have or done, it's just... I don't know. It's all just gravy, and if it ends tomorrow, then I've accomplished everything I've ever wanted to. So whatever.

Stin: Yeah, dude, I'm that lucky. I can go to... I can die.

LM: Yeah, let the nukes fall, man. I traveled Europe with my best friends and got to write some stuff that I like. And I mean, what else is there?

Stin: I mean, the craziest thing for me...I know there's so much stuff to be excited about with the trajectory of the band, but just the fact that there are people with Chat Pile tattoos, or there are people literally starting bands, and they cite us as an influence. Dude, I never, ever thought in my life I would ever be in a position where something I made would have an impact on somebody like that. And the fact that it's happening is well beyond... I could almost cry thinking about just how amazing that is. It's like, we've already succeeded. We don't need to go any further, really. I mean, we will. We'll try.

LM: I can't go back!

AF: Fingers crossed. Well, speaking of that and what Luther was just saying, maybe it's too early to talk about this, but from whatever you can give us a preview of now, what do you guys see at the moment is coming out around the corner? Are you just working on material for a new album? Are there maybe more soundtrack opportunities in the works? What is taking up the band's time creatively at the moment?

Stin: Well, we're spending a lot of plates right now. Definitely, we are in the process of writing a new album. But before that, back in December and January, we wrote and recorded an album with Hayden Pedigo, and that's going to be coming out this fall.

AF: Crazy. An entire album with Hayden?

Stin: Yeah. An entire album with Hayden. We made it together in the room. He lived a block away from me, and so he would just come over every day, and we just work on the album because we recorded it at my house. It was a really awesome experience. Hayden moved to Oklahoma last year, and I met him at a show. We hit it off, and we've become really good friends since. We were just like, "Yeah, we should do an album together!" And so we did.

LM: It was one of the easiest writing experiences for me, at least. We just all got together and some stuff was written through improv, but all of us got to do different stuff. There were a few riffs that I'd been wanting to use for a while that I couldn't really figure out to do in a more traditional Chat Pile-y way and got to use some of that stuff there. But we banged it out in three to four weeks. It was crazy. I love it. I think it's some of our most interesting stuff. It's definitely a departure; it could probably just be a different band name if we wanted to do that. But there's still Chat Pile-y stuff in there as well. You could definitely hear Hayden's, his style in there. Very different types of music, what he's doing with the American Primitivism stuff and our more rhythm-oriented noise rock, whatever you want to call it. But I don't know. We both have... Even his music captures some of the Western bleakness in a way or just...It actually has fit together in a way where it's like, yeah, I hope people like it. I think it's pretty interesting, personally. So we'll see. But yeah.

AF: There's definitely a synergy there.

Stin: Yeah, 100 %. We're all really proud of it. In fact, I got dinner with Hayden last night, and we were talking about it, and we just can't get over how proud we are of it. So even if it comes out, nobody likes it. We definitely like it.

LM: I like it, yeah.

Stin: But yeah, so that'll be coming out this fall. And then in the meantime, we're just going to just lock down and try to... We're going to attempt to overwrite for an album for once. We've never been that type of band. We're not super prolific, but we have tons of demo ideas, and we're going to spend from now until springtime just writing as many songs as humanly possible and seeing what we can do with it. Then in the middle of all that, we're supporting Fleshwater on a a three-week tour in the US. That's all that's on the agenda right now.

AF: Before you guys head out, I would be remiss if I didn't ask, just because I have been curious for a minute. On Twitter, who in the band is on car crash watch? Because it's such a wonderful and consistent part of the band's social media presence that you guys keep up with just all of the into-the-home car crashes in Oklahoma City. It's really interesting. You guys seem to cover it all from, again, through the living room walls, to a go-kart going into the garage.

Stin: Of all the tragedies that Elon has brought us, it's that I'm no longer using Twitter anymore, so I haven't been keeping up with the car crashes anymore. But maybe one day, if something happens and Twitter becomes okay again, I'll jump back on there and keep up with it.

AF: You can just use Instagram!

Stin: Yeah, that's true. But see, I had to find it through Twitter is the problem.

AF: Oh, that's true.

LM: Yeah because it's through the local news and stuff. But yeah, Stin does all our social media stuff. If you ever see a funny thing or any of that stuff, it's him doing it. But as far as the car crash stuff goes, it's just as long as Oklahoma drivers keep getting drunk and driving their cars into a 7/11, we'll be there!

Stin: We used to...Occasionally, we used to have a full-on Nightcrawler style...Someone being like, "Yo, a car just crashed into this intersection!" and I jump in my car and go over there and take a picture.

AF: I mean, it's got to make it onto an album cover eventually, at some point. Or some single or something.

Stin: I tried to sneak one of them in, and it got vetoed. Rightfully so, because the picture just didn't turn out all that great. But yeah, one of these days we'll incorporate it into something.

AF: Yeah, it's got to be a good picture. Eventually, if you keep doing it, it'll turn up. You'll get a great pic of it eventually.

LM: We've used them as a backdrop at live shows before, where it's like, "Do you guys have a logo or something?" And we're like...I think you've said, "Go to Google and find the funniest image of a car crashing into a house you can find. Dealer's choice." And then the venue guy gets it up.

Stin: Yeah, it just pops up while we're playing. We're like, "Good job!"

LM: Yeah, that one's pretty funny.

AF: All right. Thank you guys for coming on and talking to me. And just again, being open books and having a conversation. I appreciate you all.

Stin: Yeah. Thanks for having us! Anytime, man.

AF: All right. A Cool World is out now. Hopefully, you've listened to it. If you haven't, please do, and then buy it on vinyl.

LM: Yes, please.

AF: Don't be a dickhead. Listen to this fucking band. You guys have a good one. Have a good rest of your day.

Stin: Yeah. Thank you!

RB: You, too!