CHAT PILE's third album "Who Loves the Sun" is out today on The Flenser, with "Shrine" as the focus track and a video to go with it.
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Start with the cover, because it does the album's argument in one image. Devon Tower — a glassy, largely vacant monolith — stands alone over the Oklahoma City skyline, while a burnt-out house fills the foreground. The tower was built for Devon Energy, who the band note announced last year that they were leaving Oklahoma. A monument to empty promises, untouched and unbothered, with the blight it helped create creeping toward it. It is only a matter of time before that reaches the tower too.
Oklahoma City has always loomed over this band's work like a character: sprawling, isolated, economically contradictory, quietly rotting. Ray B. (vocals), L. Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass) and Cap'n Ron (drums) formed there just over six years ago as a passion project between four local film and music obsessives, and have since become one of the defining heavy acts of the 2020s underground.
The thematic ground has been laid across three records. "God's Country" bottled an American flavour of dread; "Cool World" widened out to global systemic violence; "Who Loves the Sun" peels the skin back on collective indifference — coastlines eating cities because nobody acted, the grind of dead-end work, a species submitting to data-driven inauthenticity. A slow-motion apocalypse nobody seems especially bothered by.
What is different is the writing. The band went at these ten songs with hooks in mind, drawing on pre-2000s indie and alt-rock melody and new wave, without sanding down anything abrasive. Claire Hannah and Brittany Sawtelle of NIGHTOSPHERE add vocals to "Intruder" and "Influence". Stin recorded it; Ben Greenberg mixed it.
In an era of algorithmic slop, nothing here sounds synthetic — which is close to the point.
Tracklist: Creature / Deep Blue / Same Rules / PEN I S MALL / Shrine / Intruder / Christabel '26 / Influence / Family Funeral / October All the Time
North American tour dates:
- Sep 12 — Oklahoma City, OK, Tower Theatre (SISU Fundraiser Fest) #
- Sep 17 — Minneapolis, MN, First Avenue + $
- Sep 18 — Chicago, IL, Empty Bottle (sold out)
- Sep 19 — Chicago, IL, Riot Fest
- Sep 20 — Englewood, CO, The Gothic Theatre + &
- Sep 23 — Salt Lake City, UT, The Metro Music Hall + &
- Sep 25 — Seattle, WA, Showbox SoDo + &
- Sep 27 — Portland, OR, Revolution Hall + &
- Sep 29 — Sacramento, CA, Ace of Spades + &
- Sep 30 — San Francisco, CA, The Regency Ballroom + &
- Oct 03 — San Diego, CA, Music Box + &
- Oct 04 — Los Angeles, CA, The Belasco + &
- Oct 06 — Mesa, AZ, The Nile Theater + &
- Oct 08 — Austin, TX, Radio/East + &
- Oct 09 — Houston, TX, White Oak Music Hall + &
- Oct 10 — Dallas, TX, Granada Theater + &
- Nov 05 — Detroit, MI, The Majestic Theatre + %
- Nov 06 — Millvale, PA, Mr. Smalls Theatre + %
- Nov 08 — Norwalk, CT, District Music Hall + %
- Nov 10 — Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Steel + %
- Nov 11 — Philadelphia, PA, Union Transfer + %
- Nov 12 — Washington, DC, Black Cat + %
- Nov 14 — Charlotte, NC, Underground + %
- Nov 15 — Atlanta, GA, The Masquerade + %
- Nov 16 — Nashville, TN, Brooklyn Bowl + %
- Nov 18 — Columbus, OH, Newport Music Hall + %
- Nov 20 — Indianapolis, IN, Deluxe at Old National Centre + %
- Nov 21 — St. Louis, MO, Delmar Hall + %
- Nov 22 — Lawrence, KS, The Granada + %
- Dec 13 — Boston, MA, Roadrunner (Saddest Day Festival)
+ with SOUL GLO · $ with PRIZE HORSE · & with VIRGA · % with SHALLOWATER · # with PORTRAYAL OF GUILT, NIGHTOSPHERE, TRAINDODGE and PRIMAL BRAIN