Chat Pile – Who Loves The Sun (The Flenser) [Joe Guatieri]Chat Pile are a band that I feel like need no introduction at this point.
Not even a decade since the Oklahoma Sludge Metal band formed back in 2019 and they’ve already erected a brilliant and varied discography consisting of three studio albums, two killer EPs and plenty more for someone to sink their teeth into.
Their debut full-length God’s Country is art of the highest degree to me, a listen that is both anxiety-inducing and monstrous. Chat Pile knows how to scratch that itch for people who enjoy extremity within their music.
I’ve seen the band live twice now, the first time was when they headlined The Fleece back in June of 2024 where they played with meth and Modern Technology and the second occasion was seeing them play the main stage at ArcTanGent Festival this year. They install a passion and grit within me that envelops my entire person, making me feel feral and rarely does a live band do that to me quite like them.
I have no shame in calling them my favourite band today and with their latest release that I am reviewing now, Who Loves The Sun, I had sky high expectations for it, let’s see how I found it shall we?
The record opens with a track called Creature. The riff is nasty, having both a grating and mechanical feel to it, alongside Cap’n Ron’s signature shotgun drums. It carries heavy influence from Nirvana’s Bleach with a Shellac instinct for space within the instrumentation.
Vocalist Raygun Busch beats up his throat in his own classic style, straining every word like it’s his last. At the end of the piece there is a Hardcore type of breakdown which reminds me of Korn, it sends rumbles throughout my body as Creature is beaten out of existence.
Next up we go into track three, titled Same Rules and it immediately offers up new territory for Chat Pile from the get-go with use of a drum machine and lo-fi production. I get visions of a lonesome desert landscape that stretches out for eternity and with the lack of supplies, you start to see things that aren’t really there.
Same Rules then sweeps the rug out from underneath your feet from 2:28 as it goes from mystery into being chased by an unknown entity as a gigantic other-worldly guitar curtesy of Luther Manhole hits your ears like a tone of fucking bricks! In many ways this song is like a much darker and primal version of Ween.
We then dive deeper into Who Loves The Sun with track six, Intruder. One of the most unique songs on the entire album, it’s energy is simply stunning as at any time, the band has got three or four ideas going on which all miraculously fit together, showing maximum creativity.
The song is oddly bouncy having a surprising Surf Rock feel, then having striking a mood change into something way more aggressive as by the chorus, the instruments lock in and volume is cranked all the way up within seconds.
Intruder also has Stin’s best bass playing on the entire record as it just sings above everything else, I just want to drown in it, it’s so smooth and the song is topped off by a beautiful anti-guitar solo which I welcome with a gigantic smile on my face. Throughout its runtime,
Intruder sounds like its scared of itself.
Later on we have track nine with
Family Funeral, a song that is haunting, tragic and beautiful all at the same time. Both Raygun’s words and the band’s sound echo the dread of heartbreak as the world that you once knew is being destroyed around you. The lyrics detail isolation and not being uncomfortable in where you live and who you’re with.
It’s overwhelming in every single sense of the word and I can’t help but cry to it, it’s a panic attack that takes the form of a song. It’s not only my favourite song from the LP but I think that it is among one of the best songs that Chat Pile has ever made!
Chat Pile has made another stunning record here. It defines what the band is all about to me, they make beautiful art about the most terrible things in life. Although it doesn’t quite hit those perfect teeth-grinding highs of
God’s Country for me,
Who Loves The Sun gets pretty damn close! I shall leave you with a snippet of lyrics from
Family Funeral as it defines what the record is all about to me.
I never wanted to be in love. Awful thing, dreadful thing. It felt like it came from nowhere, ok? And it frightened me how all consuming it was and I gave you everything. I gave you everything, I gave you everything to help you achieve your dreams.
9/10
Sleep – Hempispheres (Third Man Records) [Rich Piva]I am going into this review with zero emotions, mostly because I have none left to give, but also because I have not seen this must discourse created about the mere existence of a set of songs since The Deftones made the Doom Charts.
I would not have bet a new record by Sleep would elicit as much gatekeeping over the last few weeks, especially for a scene where people love to say there is not as much going on as other scenes today (this is for a different write up), but here we are, a new album from “Sleep”.
Let’s get this out of the way first: Should Al Cicneros have called this band Sleep? That is his cross (spliff?) to bear. Is the band who wrote and played the five songs on the record, Hempispheres, really Sleep? Again, Al’s problem, not mine.
Can there be a Sleep without Matt Pike? Debatable, but Al replacing him with Bubba Dupree to me shows that Al wasn’t looking to replace, he was looking to take the band to a different plane of existence.
Bubba is an amazing and unique player, definitely not Matt Pike, and I have to believe that is what Al was going for. Dale Crover rules, so no need for discussion there. So, now that all of that is out of the way, what about the songs?
For some of you this will not matter if the songs are good or not because there is no Sleep without Pike.
For those of you who judge things based on the actual music and care what I think, I really dig Hempispheres when I listen to it based on nothing except the songs. It is smooth and chill, filled with Cicneros’s trademarked playing and delivery.
Bubba Dupree’s playing is top notch, just different. There is this level of precision that is off the charts, but that at any point can go off the rails with his approach, which creates this kind of explosion anticipation throughout the journey though space.
Yes, his tone is not like Pike’s and would be a reason why you may hear this record and not think Sleep, but you should think that it is great, because it is.
Crover is Crover, and his playing fits perfectly with the other two thirds of the trio and keeps the ship in flight. I love the production on the record, as I can hear every single note perfectly, which I assure would be amplified even more if one decided to check this out with some enhancement, if you get my drift.
So basically I really, really dig the new Sleep record. Should it be a Sleep record? Not for me to say. Al has his reasons and the Sleep name means a lot. I am not going to judge those decisions. What I will say is that I think listeners would be falling over each other on how good this record is if it was not named Sleep.
Take that for what it is, but these five songs are really great, no matter what the band’s name is. 8/10
Polymoon – Mariposa Magic! (Vesperian) [Spike]
Anyone who knows my musical sweet tooth knows that if you lay down thick walls of fuzz, saturated distortion, and ethereal, disembodied vocals that sound like they’re floating in from another galaxy, you’ve basically got me hooked before the needle even clears the run-in groove. It is absolute catnip to my ears.
Finnish outfit Polymoon call their peculiar corner of heavy music “psychedelic post-gaze,” and on their third full-length Mariposa Magic!, they deliver on that premise in spades.
Following on from Caterpillars Of Creation and Chrysalis, this record takes everything that worked previously and stretches it out into a glorious, mind-bending kaleidoscope.
The opening moments of Ultra Bloom grab you instantly. The chords ring out with a massive, warm distortion that lands somewhere between the space-rock majesty of Hum and the towering, cosmic heft of Elder or Torche. Yet Polymoon are never just a tribute act.
Produced once again by Juho Vanhanen (frontman of Oranssi Pazuzu), the record possesses that strange, hypnotic undercurrent that Finnish psych bands do better than anyone else. It sounds expansive and unhurried, but there’s a real, physical muscle beneath all that shimmering reverb.
They follow the opener with I End, You Begin, a razor-sharp four-minute blast where Kalle-Erik Kosonen’s dreamlike vocals cut through waves of synthesizers and heavy guitar crunch.
It’s got a buoyant post-punk bounce that wouldn’t feel out of place on an 80s alternative playlist, except it’s been injected with a ton of fuzz and low-end drive.
What elevates the record into something truly special is how naturally it breathes across the longer compositions. Velvet Rain and Lost In Sound, Found In Color layer atmospheric synths over rolling rhythm sections, balancing ethereal quiet with sudden, eruptive walls of noise.
It pulls from shoegaze, classic prog, and heavy doom-pop without ever losing its melodic compass.
The seven-minute centrepiece Glass House, Mortal Rooms is easily one of the finest things the band has ever put to tape. It builds slowly, stacking delay pedals and synth textures until the whole track surges into a towering, emotional crescendo that feels designed to swallow you whole.
It moves effortlessly into the cosmic crawl of Welcome To Another Dimension and the soaring finale Harvest Of Stars, bringing the journey to an utterly satisfying close.
Sure, you can pick out the touchstones if you dig around; a dash of space rock here, a nod to vintage psych there but there is so much more going on beneath the surface. Polymoon have crafted an immersive, beautifully produced album that rewards multiple spins and demands to be played loud on decent speakers.
If you love your heavy music drenched in fuzz, melody, and otherworldly atmospheres, Mariposa Magic! is an essential listen. 9/10
Sworn – Null Crowned The Infinite (The Circle Music) [Mark Young]
And the last one for this week is Sworn, with their newest offering of black metal that is simply more than just ‘black metal’. Active since 2005 or so, Null is their 5th full length album so I’m coming to their party slightly late. The Starless Origin is quite the opus, a 12 minute ice cold blast that leaves nothing to chance in getting you locked in for the songs that follow.
If I had to describe this, its tempo sits in the middle, content to almost amble along. Don’t mistake this for being dull in any way as the pace is set to suit its arrangement. Its full, with an expansive sound. There is an upshift in speed, the racing drums and guitars that are a trademark of black metal the world over coming in.
This is where Sworn show their other side, bringing a cold brutality to play. Not a lot of albums start with a 12 minute song, and certainly without the scope it contains. It just seems to grow in stature and there is a mint outro that is just royal. It sets an impossibly high bar, just for how expansive it is. Null Crowned The Infinite sees a return to ‘normal’ service, playing out with a more standard runtime.
If The Starless Origin represents throwing everything at you (in a controlled manner) then this one plays out with a super keen focus. Its traditional black metal in the respect of the tempo changes but that is what you expect from them.
What you should concentrate on is how they put their songs together; there is an energy running through it even in the slower stripped back melodic moments. The lead break just fits like it has been machined to suit.
At this point they are on a roll; A Cosmic Storm is next up and slots into place, simply maintaining the very good work that has been set in place. It also represents a prime example of not taking their eye off the ball which it would have been so easy to do.
Fracture Of Aeons is possibly a better example of that, this one scorches its own path from the start, with a stunning lead that comes in around the 2 minute 30 mark that is cracking. And this is the thing; at first, I thought that the opener was like their best offering, something that suggests that it was the purest output from them in one place and that whatever came next would sit within its shadow.
I’ve changed my mind in that The Starless Origin is definitely one of the songs of the year, the ones that follow on here are not poor imitations or afterthoughts. They are fully fleshed out, with a complete identity and a build that is unique to them. Yes, they are rooted in black metal norms but they have more about them so to call them that is wrong.
Circle Of The Eternal finishes off what is a very good album, one that sets the watermark incredibly high from the off. This is a set of songs from a band I would consider to be one of the true exponents of this kind. Yes, that opener could have ruined the rest of the songs by being better than everything else but it didn’t.
The rest complimented the opener in such a way that they built off the foundations laid at the start. This end track coasts its way to a triumphant end, and I mean that in a sincere way.
All in all, this is a superb album of well crafted, superbly put together metal that should appeal to more than just fans of black metal. 9/10
