Through primal wails and Korn-fed riffs Chat Pile has never compromised their sound for accessibility. Now three full length albums in, along with a recent collaborative effort with guitarist Hayden Pedigo, Chat Pile have delivered straight to the point barrages. God’s Country and Cool World had their own spins on the horrors of modern life. On Chat Pile’s third album, Who Loves the Sun, the band takes a deeper look at the cause of our modern horror, our disconnection in our most connected times.

“You move deeper into screens” is the refrain of “Deep Blue” the lead single of Who Loves the Sun. The song is emblematic of Chat Pile’s primary concern, that we have allowed our minds to be rotted by trash that we willingly feed it. Our seemingly unconscious pull to consuming and creating content for people who don’t care about us is the enigmatic lurking specter of the record.

Guitarist Luther Manhole sat down with Northern Transmission over Zoom to discuss Who Loves the Sun, as well as Chat Pile’s recent European run, how Oklahoma City isn’t too different from the rest of the world, the band’s rise over the last few years, further songwriting expansions, their relationship to social media, and much more.

Stream Who Loves the Sun out September 4th, on The Flenser and read excerpts from our conversation below:

NT: Luther, it is great to talk to you. I’ve been a fan of Chat Pile since God’s Country came out. I think I might have seen you guys play before that record came out with Meth at Subterranean in Chicago.

Luther Manhole: Oh yeah, that was an awesome show. That was probably the biggest club show that we had played up until that point. Sub T is like a really awesome venue. Worst load-out in America, I would say. There’s no place to park, you’re just in traffic trying to make it happen, going up the stairs and stuff. But yeah, that was one of my favorite shows we played up until that point. That was a great one.

NT: Do you remember the timeline on that? Had like singles come out for God’s Country at that point?

LM: I remember when we were driving from Oklahoma, somewhere in Missouri or East Oklahoma, we had just left to go on that tour. “Slaughterhouse” had come out and there was an article from Pitchfork about it, and that was the first time we had had “mainstream press” cover us like that. I remember us reading the Pitchfork article and that was a big bump for us.

I wasn’t really a Pitchfork reader, but it was still a very cool milestone, and we were all emotional about it because it was becoming more real at that point. Especially going on those shows and seeing people coming out for us as well. It was cool. That was pretty early on. We had been playing shows, but God’s Country wasn’t out yet. I think it was that summer before it came out in July. So, it would have been May of 2022.

NT: I feel like God’s Country took the world by storm. You guys have gained a lot of speed over the years going into your third record now. Is it true you just got back from your second trip to Europe?

LM: Second tour in Europe, but we’ve done fests there. We did Roadburn and a UK thing before. So, this is the second time actually driving a van around mainland Europe. We just got back on Monday. We were doing festivals again. We’re going to do a full tour in Europe again at the beginning of 2027 for the new album.

I never got to travel like this until being in this band, so it’s always awesome when we get to go overseas or do anything like that. I’ts just very very crazy that anyone cares to hear us play.

NT: That’s cool. I want to get into that a little bit because I think of Chat Pile as a quintessentially American band. Does the sentiment of your music translate to European fans across the pond? Is there something about your music that seems universal?

LM: I think people can relate to having complicated feelings about where you’re from, even if you’re in a place that is “good,” I think everyone in the world can see the enshittification of everything right now. Even in Japan, which seems like it couldn’t be any more different than Oklahoma. Because every place is touched by capitalism and how it sucks to live under all of this. I feel like everyone relates to this weird frustration.

A lot of the lyrics Ray wrote for Who Loves the Sun reflect our collective frustration. As we’ve become more connected on the internet, we’ve become more isolated-feeling, especially now that AI is just fully destroying people’s minds. I feel like some of those topics are a little bit more broad than the American kind-of horror short stories from God’s Country. I feel like we went back to that a little bit on this record, whereas Cool World was even more about global politics and stuff. This one, while it has some of the anti-AI and frustration at technology, I feel like it also goes back to like character songs, where it’s just like a guy that’s doing something, that’s how some of our early stuff was.

NT: “PEN I S MALL” I just love that song and song title.

LM: Almost nothing in Chat Pile writes about is autobiographical from Ray, but “PEN I S MALL” is from a real sign at a real mall that got like the letters scratched off to make it look like it said “Penis Mall.” If you look at the single artwork on streaming it shows the image of the actual wall at that mall that was scratched off from when. It’s from when Ray worked at a local mall here doing maintenance years ago. The image is included in the liners and stuff.

NT: There’s some variety in subject matter across the new record, but I feel like there is a lot of focus with the internet. I wanted to ask you, since the band has gotten bigger and social media is such a huge part of being a band now, do you feel like that frustration coincides with the band becoming a bit more central to all your lives?

LM: Yeah, I mean thankfully it’s easier for me just because Stin, our bassist, is the one who still does all our social media. I’ve had a public Instagram, and I had a few thousand followers and I don’t know, I’ve never been a person that likes to share that much stuff even with people I know. I just recently deactivated, but then it sucks because it’s harder trying to stay in contact with people. Like if you’re in music, Instagram has kind of become the de facto place where musicians and artists live on social media. It sucks that everything’s based around that because it’s owned by Meta.

I feel like it is bad for your brain, positive or negative, in a way. It sucks when you go online and see people say your band sucks, but also if you’re just reading about how awesome everything is all the time, that can probably also not be the best for your brain. I’m really bad about just being on the computer all the time anyway.

I’m lucky that Stin is in charge of posting all that stuff, so I can step away and not use it as much. If I wasn’t in this band or if the band was still just a local hobby thing instead of our job, I definitely would be on it even less. It feels like we’re forced to participate in some way, and even then, it’s nice for us because we’re not on a label that’s making us do TikToks or like trying to go viral or anything.

NT: The new songs are exploring new territory for you guys three albums in. I’ve heard you guys talk about how simplicity is in the DNA of the band because there’s only three instrumentalists. “PEN I S MALL” is one of your heaviest songs, and “Deep Blue” is probably one of your poppiest songs. Are there any songs on the record that are particularly like, “Wow, that’s like something really different that we tried”?

LM: We love stuff like Nirvana and stuff and just like alt-rock in general. I listen to a lot of death metal and black metal and really challenging music, so it is fun to try and find ways when writing instrumentals, to mix extreme metal into pop or alt rock structures. I also love New Wave and pop music in general. It’s a fun puzzle to try and blend those types of influences.

There’s stuff as far as the first EP where we do melodic stuff, like “Rainbow Meat”, which is like the Arby’s song. If you look at the structure, it’s like a Beatles song. It’s a very classic structure, honestly. Sometimes when the songs are either more chaotic in the vocals or with noisy guitar parts, it kind of masks the simplicity a little bit.

When we were writing Who Loves the Sun we didn’t really go in with like a “we want this album to be this thing.” It might be like “I’d like to write a really heavy”. We write through jamming and they kind of come to us. We don’t have a central songwriter in the band. With “Deep Blue”, the guitar part I played turned it a little more gothy. I was joking but It’s like our Depeche Mode song, even though it’s not electronic. It feels very 80s pop, but in drop A.

It’s fun to try and figure out how you can mix noise rock and angular, dark-sounding stuff and low-tuned guitars, but then still have it be memorable. I want each song to be its own thing and not just all blend together. This album has the most variety for that reason. We definitely started noticing it as we were writing it, that the songs were all sounding different from each other. The record is still cohesive, but I want people when they listen to our songs to have a part that they remember, and it’s not just like, “Wait, what was that one?”

As far as songs that are especially different, “All the Time” is different, but that’s informed by the thing we did on In the Earth Again, the Hayden Pedigo collab album we did. We recorded “Same Rules” on a four-track for most of the song, and it’s like an actual drum machine for most of it. And so that was a little different.” Intruder” in terms of instrumentation, that’s just the most like complex song we’ve probably written.

NT: I love that riff. That’s my favorite guitar part on the record. Like what you were saying, you want to be able to have the songs have their own identity. I totally remember “Intruder,” because of just that jaunty riff.

LM: I mean, I’m doing upstrokes. It’s not a ska part, but, you know, it’s like XTC, very post-punk. XTC’s one of my favorite bands. I was actually listening to this jazz group called Ill Considered, and it’s this shit that is so complicated and beyond what i’m able to play, but I was listening to a lot of that, then there was just something about when we were writing “Intruder” I wanted to do that clean palm-muted staccato thing. It all just felt kind of jazzy to me. That was one where I was fucking around, and they were like, “Oh no, that sounds actually pretty cool.” We do that at the end of  Tape on Cool World, too, where I threw out a weird herky-jerky guitar part. I was like, “Does this sound cool, or is this corny?” Both times so far, the other guys have enjoyed it.

I feel like “Creature” and “Influencer” are probably the two like most Chat Pile-esque Chat Pile songs. Maybe “Family Funeral” as well, I really like that one. Who Loves the Sun is a mix of us trying some new stuff, but it is definitely the third mainline Chat Pile album. I feel like it’s still very clearly a Chat Pile record.

NT: Chat Pile is doing Riot Fest in Chicago at the end of September. For a festival with broader rock appeal, what is it like to be the heavy band attraction while there are normies walking by and seeing you for the first time?

LM: Yeah, it depends on the fest because a lot of those it’s really cool because we’ve been able to just win over audiences. Primavera went really well. We played Roskilde, which is like a big one in Europe, Kendrick Lamar headlined that one, and I remember we were in our side tent. There’s probably like a thousand people watching us, and like “we did really great,” and I was like, “Man, this is awesome.” Then we said,” let’s go watch uh Kendrick Lamar; And we go out, and at the main stage area, there’s like literally 130,000 people there. Oh, we played for like less than 1% of this whole thing, and it was like one of the biggest shows we had played up until that point.

It is always different because when you play your own shows, and people know your music, those are always the best. Especially if people know your stuff you get to watch people go crazy. They’re getting something out of it and it’s just that’s always awesome.

We just played Pukkelpop on Sunday with bands like Sombr and Tyler, The Creator. Some people watch because they’re like, “What the hell is this?” because we are kind of a novelty in that way, in that our stuff is just so much more bare bones than any of these like other productions. We can be atonal, and Ray’s taking his shirt off and, you know, rolling around. It’s not always triumphant like, “Yes, we won over all these people!” But, you know, that’s just part of it. That’s the nature of a big multi-genre fest like that.

NT: Yeah, I think you guys are playing Gogol Bordello during Riot Fest.

LM: Yeah. Sure.

NT: You’re splitting the crowd there. Then the only artist playing after on your stage is Afroman. To wrap up, what do you think the Venn diagram looks like for people sticking around after Chat Pile for Afroman?

LM: Well, I think a lot of our fans smoke weed, probably. I’ll be sticking around to watch Afroman. I think Tool headlines our night, though, on like the big stage, so I think we’re going to go try and catch Tool for sure.

pre-order Who Loves The Sun by Chat Pile HERE