Chat Pile Wants To Die In A Movie

The light is shining bright down in Oklahoma City and it’s all thanks to Chat Pile and their newest album Cool World. SLUG had to jump in on the mix along with the many many publications clambering to chat with Raygun Busch (vocalist), Luther Manhole (guitar), Stin (bassist), and Cap’n Ron (drummer). SLUG only got the first three, but boy are we grateful. In perhaps our longest interview published, Chat Pile comments on Palestine, internet culture and dying in movies. 

SLUG: Your two previous EPs and God’s Country have been on a very similar sociopolitical track, but Cool World differentiates itself by being a bit more serious, without some of the more ironic songs. Was this a pretty intentional departure? If so, why?

Raygun Busch: I didn’t necessarily mean for this to be more serious, and I don’t think God’s Country is unserious either. 
We didn’t want to do a fast food thing again, you know? I didn’t want to do it. I don’t think anybody wanted that to happen, you know? But there’s still plenty of things, I mean the title’s Cool World [so there’s] pop culture in there, absolutely. 

Luther Manhole: It’s just less obvious now than  “grimace_smoking_weed.jpg”. I know Ray talked about the past you took it as a challenge to like have a title so silly and write the most serious song on the whole album. It is interesting when people just think “Oh yeah, it’s the McDonald’s song,” you should like read the lyrics because it’s just using that imagery for something. 

Stin: There’s still quite a bit of humor sprinkled into the album. It just doesn’t beat people over the head quite as much. I do think that we were fairly deliberate about not wanting to do a “Why” pt.2. We’ve noticed a few people acting a little disappointed that we didn’t have anything like that on the record. I think if we would have tried to it would have felt really disingenuous. 

SLUG: In a couple of interviews, you guys kind of mentioned how this album is about war, generally speaking, and all the atrocities of war. Raygun called it “man’s greatest shame.” A similar topic that comes up on the album that I don’t think you guys have explicitly talked about in interviews is colonialism, which I see come up on the track “The New World” but also, in less overt ways, in “I Am Dog Now.” Was colonialism, both in a historical context, but also in a modern sense, something you guys set out to to tackle?

Raygun: I think war is connected to everything. Colonialism, climate change, it’s connected to everything bad.

Luther: We’re in Oklahoma, a place where indigenous people were forced to and then we stole that land a second time. [Oklahoma] has a very crazy and tragic history, even more so than a lot of states in the United States. It’s hard to not think about why I even live here or any of us live here. It’s very pervasive, it would be hard to cover any aspect of war without talking about colonialism or anything other than its byproducts or causes.

SLUG: I noticed a working class orientation on this album, too. Oklahoma is a pretty notable working class state, especially because of like oil mines and coal mines.

Raygun: Yeah. I hate that there’s people that live extremely well while other people live horribly. 

Luther: Yeah, we’ve all had shitty jobs our whole lives. My mom’s a dog groomer, she loves her life, but we aren’t having our rich parents bankroll the band. None of us really take for granted that now we’re able to do art kind of for a living now. It just never really seemed like doing stuff like this as a job was even remotely realistic. When you grow up places like here, that just doesn’t seem like reality. 

Stin: War, colonialism, environmentalism, class, it’s all completely tied together. It’s all really one subject with different tendrils that stick out … the nucleus is the same. All these issues compress into one burning hot issue for everybody. It’s literally destroying life on earth as we know it.

SLUG: That comes across on the album really strongly. When I read through a lot of the lyrics and I listened to the album for the first time there are these very small moments, of course, explicitly or implicitly, that are drawing back to these fractal elements of that lived experience. 

The track “Masc” stood out to me as a really poignant dive into the tender aspect of masculinity, but also the violence that exists in that too and the separations that it can create between men. Can you tell me more about that track and how it would fit into like the larger themes of the album too? 

Raygun: It’s nice to have a song like that on the record, a more personal song about people and not like a larger war machine creating death all over the world. In a way that song is about the war at home, the war with yourself. It is still about a struggle, there’s still pain coming from some struggle, that’s how it would connect thematically with the rest of the record. “Frownland” is also in that vein, too. That doesn’t really get singled out because it’s way more abstract than “Masc,” but I kind of think of those two songs as sort of sister ships on the record.

I don’t really want to over explain that song because a lot of people have come up with theories and that song means something to a lot of people for different reasons … I want you to take take from it whatever you want whatever you want to I guess.

SLUG: Understood. Following up with you, Raygun, there’s a quote that you said to Crack that I love so much: “People that aren’t talking about shit like this are cowards. This is the point of creating art, you know?” What do you guys feel is the responsibility of being a musician or any other type of artist in talking about the atrocities of our time? 

Luther: Everything is political. Everything is political in life. Every single thing in life goes through the lens of how politics affects us. I feel it’s very dishonest when you’re making stuff that has no political stance. It’s not like every song has to be “This is my political stance,” but that stuff is in everything. Making [Cool World], people are paying attention to what we’re putting out. You have to say stuff if you have any platform at all. It’s the least we can do.

Stin: I’m kind of two minds about it. I do think it’s important for bands that have platform to speak out against certain things, but as far as art goes, I don’t think a band or artist necessarily has to be overtly political, but they do have to have a point of view and a world view, and it’s by that extension [that] everything is political. You can’t just claim to wash your hands of it, because then if that’s what you’re doing, then how are you reflecting the world back? You’re not. You have to be saying something. It doesn’t have to be overt, but you have to say something. 

Raygun: [There are] bands that don’t have a point to what they’re doing and are very boring. You know, there’s a lot of fucking bands like that. Why is Macklemore the biggest celebrity that says “Free Palestine” in a song? Kendrick Lamar and Drake are having this big fight while people are getting run over with a fucking bulldozer. It’s like, Kendrick Lamar, say “Free Palestine,” you dumb motherfucker. 

SLUG: I think right now is a notable period of silence, you know, a very distinct period of silence.

Luther: I think you’re hearing stuff from artists on our size and lower. It’s really is pathetic, I just don’t understand why there aren’t bigger musicians out there saying “Free Palestine” or anything.

Raygun: I guess Chappell Roan? Maybe? I think she got in trouble or whatever, I don’t really follow that but there’s not a lot … I mean, Dave Matthews. 

Luther: I’m wearing a Dave shirt right now. 

Raygun: He was protesting the past few weeks and months but there’s not a lot of artists that are big that are saying anything and it’s fucking sucks. Nick Cave is playing shows in Tel Aviv. This is recent news. It’s insanity.

SLUG: You guys use stage names for Chat Pile. Do you feel like when you create a stage name you’re separating yourself from the person that you are to some degree? Have you guys created characters in this way? 

Stin: I think one other element [of] it is [that] all of us are big music nerds in general and I think that we have this—whether conscious or un-conscious—awareness of certain things that bands have done in the past that really endear them to their fans. It’s usually just small little things,  like having stage names or the way [Cap’n] Ron wears his hockey jersey for every single show or promo photo. There’s a certain little, ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’ type shticks that we incorporate that real fans can like look at it and be like, “Oh yeah, I know the story behind this” or “They’re doing that thing again.” I think the more layers like that, that we can kind of infuse into the band … it just kind of gives people who like our music and what we do more layers to kind of obsess over.  

SLUG: I wonder a little bit if what you’re talking about is the theatrical elements of performing, because you can craft those and choose those in fun and silly ways, you know? 

Stin: Sure, the irony of that is in every other aspect of our performance we’re so un-theatrical by design. We don’t have an interstitial we play on stage. We don’t have special graphics or even backdrops. Like we just go out there in the clothes that we wore all day and we just talk to the audience or Raygun talks to the audience. 

Luther: I like it because the type of music we play can be upsetting or crazy or intense or whatever. Typically when you see music like that, there’s this whole atmospheric stuff in between the songs and it’s creating this speed. So I think it is also just a little unique and weird for people to see our whole deal.  

Raygun: I cannot fathom having to put on rock clothes. We’ve never been in the band like that. I’m thinking about some bands really put on that uniform before they go on the stage. I can’t imagine.

Luther: Sometimes you want to cultivate an image and I get it. I’m not going to shit on that because if I was in a crazy black metal band, we’d want to cultivate that more. 

Stin: I would feel silly up there. Another part of it that’s sort of important to me is that with guitar music and rock music, there’s such a distance for a lot of young people about punk and DIY and stuff. I know hardcore is as big as it’s ever been, but there is a whole generation of people that think that rock music takes place in arenas and has all this these theatrics to it and all this stagecraft and stuff. And so when they see a band at our level and we don’t have any of that bullshit and we just go up, we hang out before the show and talk to fans and we get on stage without any fanfare. I think it’s mind blowing for them.

SLUG: Maybe you don’t have to become a celebrity, you know, in that way?

Stin: Yeah, and not that by any means we’re even close to the threat of us becoming that, but there are kids who come up to Chat Pile shows and we are maybe their first or second rock show ever. And they just don’t have that sort of DIY background and hopefully we can bring a little bit of that to them and realize that’s sort of the way things can operate, you know? 

SLUG: We and Salt Lake City understand the DIY venue is everything. It’s a big part of how people perform here. Without that, there’s really nothing.

Luther: We’ve enjoyed our time in SLC. I know Ray and I both love Graywhale. 

Raygun: I love Graywhale. You got some good vegan restaurants, Mark of the Beastro.

Luther: They had a vegan chicken parm that was like super good. It’s always beautiful there. It also just a city with crazy religious history like where we’re at as well, so I feel at home.

Raygun: There’s a lot of really interesting film history there too, you can walk those neighborhoods and you feel like you’re in a fucking movie and shit. Silent Night, Deadly Night was filmed in the area. It’s one of the most important cities in America for slasher movies that there is, you know? 

SLUG: I see so many elements of internet culture in all of your projects, from “grimace_smoking_weed.jpg” to the track “Tape” about how genocide is broadcast immediately to your phone. What is it about the internet that y’all are attracted to?

Luther: For us it’s fully unavoidable but we’re not trying to play into it, we’re commenting on it. The internet has been its worst post-COVID.  

Raygun: The internet is stripping us of our humanity, you know, it’s bad for us to have access to everything at once. These images of genocide right next to ads.

SLUG: It is interesting that you guys are a band in a zeitgeist with fans that are probably my age and you guys are able to actually comment on the decline of the internet because you have seen basically all of it within even your lifetime—it’s gone from message boards, maybe download a video if you wanted to and then to the absolute darkest cesspool where you’ve already sold off all of your information without consent and you don’t even know it. 

Luther: Yeah my identity has been stolen three or four times. I mean, maybe some people don’t know that and they’re oblivious to, you know, how the internet is and what’s going on. It is like one of the greatest tools ever created and also, it has destroyed all of us, myself included. 

Stin: I think the world is noticeably worse because of just everything about it. And I would almost rather have just been born into it and not know what it used to be like, but unfortunately I know both sides and I can tell you without question that it used to be better. 

SLUG: It’s hard to not feel like you’re chronically online because everything requires you to be online. 

Raygun: Smartphones are the true evil, your computer’s with you everywhere you go and eventually it’s gonna be in our fucking brains, you know? But I hate it. It’s ruining my life every day. It ruins my life. I’m not immune to it. Everybody has one of these fucking things. It’s amazing, but it’s terrible. 

SLUG: I think on the older internet there used to be innocence and a little bit of a humanity wherever you went. And I don’t think there’s any amount of that that’s perceptible anymore. 

Luther: Irony was invented in like, 2009, and then everything changed. Sincerity is completely gone because irony is an epidemic in culture right now and even we do ironic stuff in our music sometimes, but it’s so culturally dominant right now.

Raygun: At least for me growing up, there was a huge irony phase before that had nothing to do with the internet necessarily because I’m just a little bit older than that. I still like to joke around but being that way about everything, like hating everything…It’s a horrible way to live. I think, I just think all I’m saying is, I think younger people are just kind of like that anyway. There’s that Simpsons joke when Homer is playing Hullabalooza. This is from an episode from 1994 where he’s like, I can’t remember what he says …

Stin: He goes: “Oh it’s that cannonball guy, he’s cool.” And then the other guy goes, “Are you being sarcastic dude?” And he goes, “I don’t even know anymore.” 

SLUG: A lot of you guys are big film buffs and already wrote a song for the movie Tenkiller. If you had an opportunity to write one song or a soundtrack for any movie that’s ever come out, what would it be? 

Luther: If we go back in time and there’s another secret amazing Romero zombie movie from in between Day of the Dead and Diary of the Dead or the ‘90s one we never really got, I would love to do that. 

Raygun: It would be fun to just score Beavis and Butt-head Do America, and then don’t have “Love Rollercoaster,” in the fantasy that you proposed, scoop that and we do something. We write a different song. 

Luther: I would love at some point to do the Airheads thing, to be a band in a club playing in a movie in which the characters go to the club and we’re in the background. 

Raygun: My favorite is UB40 play themselves in Speed 2 and they maybe die? Remember when Offspring is in Idle Hands, what’s his name talks a little bit before the hand drops on his head and rips his scalp off. 

SLUG: So y’all are in the background, you get one line and then you’re all dead? 

All Together: Yeah. 

SLUG: It’d be a good way to break up the band 

Luther: We don’t announce it, we just die in a movie and then never put anything out again. We make it cannon. 

SLUG: You could do the Blair Witch where you delete your social media and you move away from Oklahoma. 

Stin: That rocks, we’re gonna remember that. 

Chat Pile will be playing in their regular clothes at Urban Lounge on March 5. You can get your tickets here. Cool World is streaming on all major platforms.

Read more interviews with national musicians:
La Luz’s Shana Cleveland is “Living in a State of Love” 
Catalyst 20 Years Later: A Conversation with New Found Glory