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Peter Lo Raso
Describing Chat Pile is a very doleful, taciturn, and sometimes depressing undertaking. Your average next-door-neighbor type would unfailingly recoil in horror if this type of terrible sludge were eschewed within a ten-mile distance of their comfortable, gin-sipping lifestyle. There is no other way to describe the Brutal Truth that lies within the folds of God’s Country than to imagine a king-hell-sized Purple Demon holding drug paraphernalia suddenly descending on a very high-strung paranoid freak (as illustrated in the song “grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg”). What I mean to say, through all this bad noise and rambling, is that Chat Pile is an incredibly unique outfit that finds its strength through very potent emotional energy.
I first came across Chat Pile as a fluke, whether it be through the bowels of “Spotify Recommended” or some dark, dank recess of a YouTube playlist explored at some unholy hour; nonetheless, I was almost immediately taken with the band. They borrow their name from the large, artificial mountains of toxic slag and mining waste (piles of chat) that litter their home state of Oklahoma. Once again, metaphor serves better than outright description – their music is a grim manifestation of the Discarded America. They are comprised of four pseudonymous individuals going by the names of Raygun Busch, Luther Manhole, Stin, and Cap’n Ron; and it is nigh impossible to quantify exactly what the hell they are doing. I can sit here and wax poetic about how they blend sludge-doom metal with noise, how they engineer incredibly ear-catching riffs through layers of distortion and ambient guitar-feedback-mania; I could feed you all some horrendous drivel about how Chat Pile “really gets to the heart of the whole thing, man… those guys are on the level” etc., etc. but all of that would be for naught. In fact, go ahead and start playing the album before you help yourself to the rest of this text. That’s the only way you’ll get it.
Chat Pile had released two EPs before this debut album – This Dungeon Earth knocked on the door, Remove Your Skin Please saw the shadow cast through the peephole… and God’s Country kicked the damn thing in. Just about now, if you’ve followed the instructions, you should be hearing the first “hammers and grease” screeched by Busch as the guitar wailing comes in to back it. The persistent theme of Chat Pile’s music, as should now be obvious, is the horror of reality. The only fantasy in this world is a psychotic hallucination – there is no end to the train track.
Only listen to this album if you are prepared to be bummed out.
Landmarks of this desolate landscape include the somber and slow “Pamela”, the violent paroxysm of “The Mask” (recounting a real-life serial killer’s assault on a Sirloin Stockade), and the aforementioned penultimate “grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg” that leaves the listener with a deeply uncomfortable emotional anti-climax. There is never a moment of reprieve or relaxation throughout the whole runtime – even the spoken word track “I Don’t Care If I Burn” maintains an ominous atmosphere. The narrator half mumbles a depraved monologue as the sounds of peeling duct tape in a wet basement serve as background. There is no moral to the story, no greater meaning, no wholesome message like some damned Morrisey album that’s preaching about veganism. Chat Pile aims to tell the listener only one thing – hell is real, and we’re all living in it.
This is the first release that I have acquired from The Flenser, a label I had not previously heard of until Chat Pile drew me to them – I was surprised to see several familiar acts on their catalog (Have a Nice Life, Succumb, Planning for Burial, Street Sects…), all fitting brethren for the Pile. I was also not disappointed by the integrity of the pressing itself, which was committed to a beautiful translucent red vinyl that was more than able to capture the cavernous sound that the band goes for. Every painstaking guitar wail and bass chug was recounted with the utmost fidelity. Aside from this, the packaging itself is fairly plain – opting to let the horrifying message be carried by their music itself (save for a few pictures of some dilapidated Oklahoma sites). I will certainly be looking to The Flenser to acquire more types of vinyl if this is the standard they hold themselves to.
As I stated earlier, Chat Pile aims to deliver the listener one Brutal Truth about the world, and it’s hollered and yelled at the very beginning of the album: “There’s More Screaming Than You Think.”
Here, Relapse Records has reissued Prowler in the Yard. Those familiar with the grindcore world need no introduction to Pig Destroyer. Prowler was released in 2001 and remains a hugely influential album within the genre (due in no small part to the affiliations of the band’s members, most notably Scott Hull and his involvement with Agoraphobic Nosebleed, AxCx…). Remarks in the liner notes, written by guitarist Scott Hull, illustrate that this reissue “isn’t intended as a double dip for folks who’ve enjoyed the original album for all these years… not ‘cleaner’… not ‘more pro’ or ‘polished’, just ‘better’ somehow.” The technological gap between 2001 and 2015 is fairly vast, and the album was recorded in the infancy of digital production. The reissue rather solidly accomplishes this goal of being better, managing to somehow be punchier and more pummeling than the original mix (and going so far as to omit track “Evacuating Heaven” due to the lost master vocal recordings – the band would rather clip a track entirely than try to reproduce or rehash old material).
Now, when most people wave a controversial album around and proclaim “THIS isn’t for the faint of HEART! By God, those damned degenerate musicians talk about this that other blah blah blah…” nine times out of ten it is either out of paranoia or raw dislike of the genre. For every person that gets offended by something, there are a hundred more that enjoy it. So please understand the gravity of my words when I say that THIS album ISN’T for the faint of heart. It IS a tremendous work of musicianship, a landmark of brevity in songwriting whilst maintaining ear-catching riffs, a picture-perfect demonstration of incredible vocal delivery, et cetera…
But the sound is extreme, and the content even more so. This album, by design, is something that the sensitive should be protected from. It causes people disgust in the most humiliating way possible, which is why it’s so great.
The filth is unavoidable – the opening of the album is a painfully clear robotic voice that recounts a macabre situation unfolding at a snow cone stand, and likewise, the album is bookended with a conclusion to this tale. Those with fragile ears are not given the advantage of vocal obscurity that most heavy albums provide; it is very easy to hear what is being said. Indeed, the absolute depths of depravity are something freely admitted within the liner notes of the album – the entire thing is meant as a monument of adoration and hatred toward a girl “not named Jennifer.” As stated therein, the band’s vocalist J.R. had been dating said “non-Jennifer” who was “damaged, unstable, very attractive, and liked to play dangerous games.” Evidently, the girl became a point of obsession for the vocalist, and Prowler represents some sort of cathartic release on his behalf. It’s something that could make most sick to their stomachs.
However, it’s always fun to play it for unsuspecting listeners. Pick some situation that allows for dramatic buildup. Let the opening track roll past with its ominous allure, then spring some sort of devious trap when “Cheerleader Corpses” kicks in. Once the flop sweat starts showing on the de facto grill-master of your Memorial Day celebration, that’s when tracks like “Trojan Whore”, “Mapplethorpe Grey”, and “Sheet Metal Girl” start coming into the fold. The riffs that get you two-stepping through the fire pit, launching burning marshmallows at the windows of your in-law’s house.
Good, American fun.
Most people don’t react well when you subject them to that level of suffering – especially when it’s being spouted by someone who just got out from under a toxic relationship with a terminally self-destructive mental case that was locked up for trying to bash a woman’s head into the asphalt. I’ve gained as many friends as I have lost through the irresponsible use of this album. One fellow I played it for in the High School parking lot hasn’t talked to me for years.
However, when you combine that type of emotional intensity with Scott Hull’s Earache Alum guitar work, absolutely heinous fast drumbeats and a remaster that has essentially been fourteen years in the making – then let Relapse press it, a company that has a pedigree of high-quality sonic integrity and meticulous production – well, then you really have something that will scare the straights.
That’s about all there is to say about the wax itself. I’ve reviewed several vinyls at this point that have been pressed by Relapse Records, and I have not yet had a complaint. High fidelity, no egregious production errors… beautiful spackle “orange with black smoke” vinyl, a rather provocative liner note sheet laden with aggressive pictures of the band members and the aforementioned background anecdotes… a holistically twisted release for those with truly demented palates. The care that was taken in the remaster was very painstakingly matched in the production of the vinyl.
Full of Hell is a name that I can never stop seeing. Their body of work includes several collaborations with artists all across the board of experimental heavy music – Merzbow, the Body , Code Orange Kids, Intensive Care, Nails, HEALTH, and most recently Primitive Man… they have amassed quite a track record since their formation in 2009. As indicated by the smorgasbord of prolific names I just listed, Full of Hell remains somewhat of a genre quagmire (exactly the type of band I like to listen to). While it is no secret that the realms of grindcore, power violence , and noise have been converging in on each other for some time now, in my opinion, Full of
Hell represents the most successful effort in this regard.
Some aspiring “noise-grind” musicians may find themselves content with wildly twisting knobs on their modular synth to produce an ear-splitting whine, then adding a blastbeat underneath; Full of Hell manages to display a level of musical sophistication that is absent from such crude bedroom endeavors. While they had released two albums early on in their career before embarking on a heavy collaborative streak, I found their 2017 effort Trumpeting Ecstasy to be the moment that my interest was piqued. From the second those distorted Werner Herzog samples play at the beginning, it’s a non-stop half-hour of pummeling, horrific assault.
At the foundation lies Dave Bland, an absolute drumming powerhouse that delivers appallingly fast rhythms a la Zach Hill. Pure, unrestrained percussive mania. Sam DiGristine and Spencer Hazard offer equally impressive performances behind bass and guitar, respectively; weaving together riffs that ebb and flow forth from the thunderous cacophony like dolphins jumping up from the waves. On top of that, there is the haunting and indecipherable lyrical delivery, plus one hell of an instinct for esoteric and eldritch poetry on behalf of Dylan Walker.
Garden of Burning Apparitions is the group’s latest solo effort, and it continues its trend of putting forth cutting-edge grind. If one were to ignore the miles-long list of collaborations and previous releases and purely look at this album itself, it would be very easy to qualify Full of Hell as having the widest artistic scope in grindcore. The artwork that accompanies the album is laden with images of strange cult rituals, starscapes, beautiful and mesmerizing pieces straight out of a Lovecraft coma dream… things that give the musical compositions a type of doom-laden beauty. The sense is that the listener is a spectator to some type of profane mass, with guttural spell recitations twisting in tongues, drums beaten with sixteen hands, “yawning over endless fields of stars” … guitars and bass strings amplified through pipe organs, interrupted with violins, discordant humming, saxophone cacophony, ghosts, and ethereal haunts. Then, the interludes of ear-splitting noise carry the reply that the void sends forth.
I vividly remember visiting a swap-meet-esque record trading event with my dad. Wall-to-wall classic records, people proudly displaying rare Beatles collectibles, out-of-print jazz suites, Pet Sounds… that kind of thing. I heard, in passing, two men with long grey beards having a discussion:
“I just can’t dig it, maaan… all these new punk bands that just get up on stage, bang on drums, and yell for fifteen seconds… where’s the guitar solo, dude?”
“Yeah man, it’s a bummer.”
Full of Hell spits in the face of all these prejudices by delivering a cinematic experience that also includes supernaturally deadly riffs, all within thirty minutes. No need for any extended interludes or long jam sections.
Standouts such as “Industrial Messiah Complex”, “Burning Apparition”, and “All Bells Ringing” are prime examples of this. Compellingly structured and brief songs that still give an impression of oncoming dread. Full of Hell employs, in many cases, a vocal pattern that has seemingly become their signature – a back and forth between shrill high and deep low, with one almost replying to another, like a congregation in response to a preacher. Garden also relies less on sampling than its ancestor Ecstasy, instead giving way to unorthodox orchestral arrangements and more atmospheric power plays. This, combined with the vision of artwork accompanying the album, gives Garden of Burning Apparitions a nice and tidy bow for the Sword of Damocles to Hurdle Down and Rain Asunder Upon.
The vinyl itself is yet another Relapse pressing, and I have already spoken at length about their attention to quality both in this review and in others. Yet again, they do not disappoint. My particular copy is in a metallic silver, which matches the greyscale of the jacket. Included is a tri-fold insert that includes lyrics and cryptic pieces of artwork that, as mentioned, drastically improve –
Jesus God, this infernal noise has been cranking for twenty minutes!
That’s the thought that crossed my mind just before I realized that, in a nasty little piece of trickery, the sneaky bastards ended the album with a locked groove, so you can put this otherworldly lullaby on and let it spin until you reach that white noise Tootsie Roll center that will roll on forever and lull you to sleep (with visions of Burning Constellations and Billowing Smoke).
Or just really confuses you when you’re struggling to keep your eyes open at your desk.
Aside from all this rambling, the pressing really is very good. As a matter of fact, I had better go lift that needle now, otherwise, it’ll carve through the wax. Who knows what type of weird, forgotten knowledge you might find if you dug deep into this album.