On Chat Pile’s unparalleled debut, the noise guitars blast and pressing questions are asked

Heavy American music has been on the rise for years, and is increasingly overtaking it in Europe and Scandinavia. The innovation really comes from a continent away. Where previously Deafheaven and Zeal & Ardor linked metal to shoegaze and blues, now the Oklahoma band Chat Pile makes a fresh connection between the old post-punk and the hardest rock imaginable. On the unparalleled debut God’s Country Chat Pile sometimes sounds like the Irish Fontaines DC: just as catchy, but three notches angrier.

Chat Pile lets the low-tuned guitars blast into industrial noise, which also seems to be borrowed from the oeuvre of the illustrious noise band Big Black. The vocals of the singer with the stage name Raygun Busch sometimes roar like those from hardcore, but more often the lyrics are declaimed as if it were a union leader on a soapbox. In the increasingly choppy and exciting anthem why Chat Pile asks simple questions: ‘Why do people have to live on the streets, when there are buildings all around them, with no people in them but with the heating on?’ By far the best heavy album of this year, so far.