I don’t have a “real” post today, I’m gearing up for next week. It’s a big one as next Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. It’ll be a post every day next week and work/time constraints along with the insane baseball trade deadline have my attention pulled in a million different directions.

But I have a bit of time to discuss my anticipated new release for today. Chat Pile are a very recent outfit from Oklahoma who have generated quite the buzz through a few EP’s. The group just dropped their debut full-length God’s Country today.

I was eagerly awaiting this album as I’d picked up their EP’s last year. I clearly wasn’t the only one – the album has a pretty insane amount of buzz and people are going about it left and right on social media. They also got a rave review from Pitchfork, a monumental feat in and of itself.

I’m not going to attempt a review of any kind, I’ve played the album twice now and I don’t have those kind of skills. I’ll say that I’m really impressed with the album – the music is a contrast between some honestly pretty smooth though noisy riffing and very, very caustic vocals and lyrical themes. This isn’t full on “metal” as much as a communication of society’s ills with a noisy backdrop.

This album isn’t a celebration of the ills of culture, instead it’s a document of them. Chat Pile are located just a few hours from me and I’ve seen the piles of the toxic lead mining remnants that the group are named after. There are a lot of messed up, suffering people in our region and a very twisted, dystopian government that does nothing to improve conditions. God’s Country spells out what this area looks like and sounds as fucked up as things around here are.

So far I’m very much enjoying this very harrowing album. I’m sure it will be in play toward the end of the year when I get to the work of considering my favorites of 2022. I’m off to enjoy my weekend in this dystopian shithole, have a good one and I’ll see everyone next week as I hit my one year mark.