Key Tracks: “Influence,” “Family Funeral”

Batten down the hatches, the kings are back. The first album from the Oklahoma City noise rock upstarts, God’s Country, is somewhat easily one of the best records of the decade so far. But I personally couldn’t really crack into their follow-up, 2024’s Cool World. I enjoyed it, but I just couldn’t quite click with it. So when I saw initial rave reviews for their third true album, Who Loves The Sun, I was a little apprehensive. No reason to be. This takes everything Chat Pile has done to date, and makes it 10x better.

Whether intentional or not, Chat Pile landed at the exact right moment. Heavy music is on the rise again, and the torchbearers are bands that are not settling themselves into one specific genre. Chat Pile often tour with metal bands, play metal festivals, and sell merch directly to metal fans – but they’re not a metal band. Noise rock is a bit of an “unclassifiable” fallback, and Chat Pile have always managed to just skirt around the metal moniker. Their music is very sludgy, often called straight sludge metal, which I understand but do not agree with.

So Chat Pile find themselves on a precipice of their own making. This album is their most diverse yet, which also makes it both their most ambitious and the outright best. Bands like Turnstile and even 100 Gecs are incorporating various genres of metal and hardcore into other influences, in an effort to make them more palatable to the masses. The end results are intentionally messy albums that can switch from thrash metal to pop on a whim. But Chat Pile aren’t a band like Turnstile, Chat Pile have found a specific lane that is all their own and so far haven’t strayed too far from it. On Sun, they do.

The noise rock is strong across this record, of course. Early single “PEN I S MALL” hearkens back to the sludgy, noisy songs the band did across their first two records. Most of the songs on the album do – they’re laboriously heavy, keep a medium tempo, and feature vocals either talked or screamed from frontman Raygun Busch. But the creeping outside influences cannot be ignored. The hypnotic opening guitar riff from “Shrine” sounds akin to 1997 KoRn. Late-album cut “Influence” sounds similarly nu-metal inspired, with the bass-heavy soggy riffs and almost beat-inspired drumming. You’d be forgiven for hearing some subtle black metal influences here too, in an occasional wall of noise. And the largely acoustic finale “October All The Time”? That’s new entirely.

Chat Pile have always been a pessimistic, misanthropic band, and there are some songs here that are abrasive on the mind. Late album standout “Family Funeral” is the maybe the most emotionally intense song the band have ever done. Chat Pile are extremely political (on the good side), and always have been. This is a deadly serious record. Chat Pile are a serious band, but it was only a few years ago they were also releasing songs with titles like “grimace_smoking_weed.jpg.” Yes, even “PEN I S MALL” is a humorless tune. Gone are those little strings of satire among the misery – it’s just misery now. Come play along!

2026 is a year that demands a lot of visceral emotion. If an artist wants to combat everything morose and find joy – more power to them. But Chat Pile, more than maybe any other band, is expected to produce something loud and angry. They succeeded far beyond anyone’s lofty expectations. It’s an automatic contender for album of the year. It might be my favorite heavy album so far, though the sudden rebirth of The Saddest Landscape is pretty unimpeachable. It isn’t for the faint of heart, or the purists, but for people who are looking to live through someone venting their frustrations in a raw and unique way, Chat Pile have you covered.

Who Loves The Sun is available on streaming and Bandcamp now.