The transition from Chat Pile‘s God’s Nation to Cool World is partly, because the album titles counsel, a matter of scope. Whereas the Oklahoma Metropolis band’s 2022 debut God’s Nation tore into the merciless horrors particular (however not distinctive) to American territory, its follow-up finds them widening their gaze, “with ideas,” in accordance with vocalist Raygun Busch, “particularly about disasters overseas, at residence, and the way they have an effect on each other.” If solely they had been simply ideas. The profusion of violence, dying, and struggling – at occasions unspecified and infrequently unimaginable, the stuff of nightmares, however all the time harrowingly, inescapably actual – is just not merely a thematic concern. It feels elemental. Busch makes no try at an argument, and his bandmates provide no catharsis in its absence. To ship something however a hopeless and uncompromising imaginative and prescient of actuality could be to disregard every thing that’s in entrance of us; it might imply to evolve, and Chat Pile have little interest in that. They swallow all of it in, and it bleeds proper by the core of their gruelling music.
So although Cool World appears past the ugliness of “residence,” it nonetheless turns, or relatively pulls, inward, internalizing anguish wherever it’s discovered. Busch is a dynamically empathetic performer who switches views from one track to the following, solely to remind us, as he does on the opening observe, ‘I Am Canine’, that “everybody bleeds.” There he embodies the final word topic of dehumanizing apathy, lurching and pleading to no avail. However on the next observe, ‘Disgrace’, the narrator awakens from a state of indifferent ignorance to the scorching fact, which cuts right down to the bone: “It stung scorching in my eyes/ The phantasm of justice/ It burned deep in my face.” When “the cranium speaks and its phrases are truthful,” what’s there for the mind to motive? Busch describes photographs of conflict prefer it’s the primary time his characters are, not essentially seeing, however deeply registering them: “Of their dad and mom arms/ The children had been falling aside/ Damaged tiny our bodies/ Holding tiny nonetheless hearts.” (One other reminder: “All tears movement from the identical supply.”)
Cool World isn’t about bearing witness to the tragedies of the world a lot because it simply does, and those that have their eyes pressured open can’t do something to clean them out. Like ‘grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg’, God’s Nation’s nearer, ‘Tape’ dramatizes the tormenting course of however leaves the story open to interpretation: “I suppose somebody needed to see/ Somebody needed to be horrified by what they’d achieved/ Somebody needed to say one thing or it might have gone on without end.” We solely realize it was the worst, and it was recorded, and in that approach, it does haven’t any finish. From ‘Disgrace’ to ‘Humorous Man’, it’s not laborious to determine the atrocities documented on the album not simply as not simply systemically facilitated, however intergenerational: “Caged life/ Caged damage/ Handed down/ Previous earth,” Busch howls on ‘Humorous Man’. And with the highly effective pairing of ‘Camcorder’ and ‘Tape’ in the midst of the report (or the top of the primary half feeding into the second), there’s a way of lyrical continuity that elevates the album from its predecessor. Solely ‘Masc’, which is extra interpersonal and susceptible in its anguish, feels a little bit disconnected.
However any sense of progress inside Cool World, like that purported by mankind, exists solely to focus on the cyclical nature of trauma. “Nowhere to go,” Busch despairs on ‘I Am Canine Now’, a sentiment that’s cemented by the ultimate observe: ‘No Approach Out’. Chat Pile haven’t any intention to complicate their message on their second album; in actual fact, they make it sound extra direct. No subgenre of steel has ever felt apt for the band, however now “noise rock” barely applies, too; their musical strategy is, fittingly, extra elemental, foregoing the noisy, proggy sprawl that marked God’s Nation. That makes it extra pointed however no much less eclectic: post-punky disaffection contrasting death-metal growls on ‘Disgrace’, the punishing (dare I say nu steel?) grooviness of ‘Frownland’, the dissonance unfurling to make approach for wordless terror on ‘Camcorder’. Chat Pile can get as heavy and cacophonous as they like, however all of the fury and ache exploding into view is nothing in comparison with the hollowness that follows. Busch’s supply is at its most numbing when he repeatedly intones, “I can really feel it”; when he admits to screaming all evening, it’s with complete and haunting resignation. Possibly kicking and screaming does nothing. However when you cease wanting away – in case you have the privilege of hiding, that’s – silence is now not an choice.
