Ahead of their set at Outbreak Festival 2024, I got the chance to speak to Stin who plays bass in American noise rock band Chat Pile. We reflected on the band’s debut album God’s Country which is almost two years old as well as looking forward to the future about the upcoming second album from the band set to come out sometime later this year.
So, with this being your first time at Outbreak, how are you feeling about tonight?
We’re super excited. We don’t really totally know what to expect, because we’re a little bit out of the typical sort of hardcore spectrum of things, but it’s super exciting. There’s a lot of really cool bands, and it’s kind of an honour to be associated with them.
Speaking of those really cool bands, is there anyone on the on the lineup tonight that you’re excited to see?
Always excited to see Bib, they’re one of my favourite live bands of all time. We’re from Oklahoma City and they’re from Omaha, it’s not super close but it’s not super far away. But because of that, Bib has played through OKC a million times, and every time I’ve seen them the next show is greater than the last so I can’t wait to see him in front of a huge audience, it’s gonna be really cool.
You guys did shows in Bristol and London leading up to this, how did they go?
They were great. Bristol sold out in a couple of weeks and people were just going nuts, and then in London we played the Electric Ballroom, and it was a really big place. It was packed out and people were just losing their minds, it was so much fun. Everyone’s really nice out here compared to the states, so we appreciate that.
Looking back onto God’s Country, it’s almost been two years since that album came out. I was wondering, with the touring that you guys have done since then, have any of the songs evolved or changed over time in the live set in comparison to what they sound like on the record?
Nothing that anyone would notice too dramatically, but there’s a couple of songs that now have jam sections. If we ever play Anywhere, that one has a long outro that we improvise on. We do play Grimace from time to time, but we don’t like playing that long outro, so we usually try to tie it to another song somehow. I know people love the drone section of that, but I don’t think we want to waste a third of our set just playing the same three chords over and over.
Will Grimace be played tonight?
So, here’s an interesting thing, we don’t ever use a set list, we just make it up as we go. Who knows? I have no idea. Our set’s a little bit short, so it tends to not be one of the more prioritised songs, but you never know what can happen!
Looking back at that album, something that a lot of people gravitate towards, myself included, is the intensity and the paranoia of the record. Does that ever get hard to try and replicate that feeling on a night-to-night basis with extensive touring? And if so, how do you combat that?
I don’t think so necessarily, because once we’re up there, there’s enough energy and adrenaline going on so channelling whatever needs to be channelled just happens organically. We don’t have any pre-show rituals or anything like that, we just get out there and get going, and as soon as the lights come on, it just feels like it’s time to go.
There’s been word circling that maybe a second album could be coming soon?
I would say the words are very true. Probably this fall our follow up is gonna come.
Is there anything when you were in the studio for this new record that you consciously thought to do differently than for your debut? Any lessons you learned from that process that you took on for this album?
We actually record ourselves, so we learned a lot about the workflow and the best ways to write and record. We wrote this one quite a bit quicker than the last one, but not due to any type of sloppiness, it was more like we got better at the process. As far as what we were trying to consciously go into it, we really wanted it to be a little more direct, because God’s Country definitely has kind of some more sprawling songs, the arrangements are kind of complicated at least as far as the stuff we do, and we wanted to get kind of more to the roots of our EPs that tend to be a little more of a punk flavour, like three minute songs.
Are there any sort of inspirations that you took on for this record that maybe you weren’t really thinking about in God’s Country?
The thing is, everybody in the band contributes equally to the writing process, so all of us kind of have our separate things that we’re chasing, so it’s hard to pinpoint one particular inspiration. I’ve been listening to the album Katabasis by Nightosphere quite a bit through this whole time. I don’t know if it directly influenced me, but I’m sure there were some subconscious elements that kind of leaked through on that.
God’s Country gained such great acclaim when it came out, was there any sort of pressure when you were making the second record?
You always want people to like what you’re working on, but we definitely didn’t think too hard about what people would or wouldn’t like in terms of making the record. Because what we’ve learned is as long as we like what we’re doing, then that’s all that matters. If you follow your own instincts and you’re happy with what you put together, then at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Now, do we hope people like it? Sure, that would be wonderful. But I don’t think we ever, not for a second, thought about writing something differently or doing something to please other people at all. We were the only ones we were concerned about.
What can we look forward to for the rest of the year, maybe even looking into 2025, for Chat Pile?
Well, we’ve definitely got a new record coming out in the fall, and then we will be touring quite a bit for that in the States over the winter. And then, nothing’s set in stone yet, but it’s starting to look like we will be in mainland Europe for the first time ever in April, probably a full tour on that. So, again, nothing set in stone, but that is projected right now.
