Can the future of rock music belong to four men who look like the last picks in a school PE lesson? Whether it’s an image of their singer’s beer belly or a photo of them dressed for a summer party, Chat Pile do not conform to any stereotype. In other words, they’re comfortable being themselves. This is important because they inhabit the same world as Hugh Selby Jr.’s eccentric characters and drink in bars that only Norman Mailer could describe. They haven’t changed much for their third album, but they sound just as unhinged and unashamed of the nu metal rhythms creeping into their music.
The drum groove and ugly arpeggios of the opening song, ‘Creature’, are nothing new for Chat Pile, but few execute these aspects with as much terror. There was talk of them drawing on indie-rock and new wave influences for this record. You won’t find them here. The sliding bass loop is straight from Faith No More’s repertoire, the syncopated chords from Korn’s golden era when Ross Robinson controlled the dials. Nobody does intense rock like this band. The spoken word verses are as disturbing as anything by M.Gira of Swans.
Indeed, the Korn/Sepultura influence on the post-punk menace of ‘Deep Blue’ invites contemplation as to whether this is the future of heavy music. If so, it’s a haunting meditation on modern life. The indifference of a technology-dominated society is the real focus here. Chat Pile bring to life the people who work dead-end jobs. Their protagonists fall into crime through obsession and alienation rather than poverty or material necessity. Listen to the way they work the Depeche Mode of the late 1980s into a grunge environment for ‘Same Rules’. They restrain the clunky down-tuned guitar here and wander into an introspection of brooding bass and doleful guitar shapes instead. Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with the entry-level nu metal riffs of ‘PEN I S MALL’ when it gnashes its teeth like Unsane and bottles up its frustrations in a loosened necktie and damp shirt. The raw aggression is scary, perhaps because the Oklahoma quartet have a warped sense of humour. People who wear badminton shorts on stage and shout like this should not be ignored. These are serious men with sludge metal records in their collection and a love of the darker side of literary fiction.
Who Loves the Sun is a reminder to every metalcore band out there that rock can be heavier on both an emotional and a sonic level. The problem is how we’ve allowed rock to be dictated by bands that don’t identify with it, most notably Radiohead. No doubt, Chat Pile will like the latter, but they also give a kick up the backside to the metal bands out there that tread water. Musically, the question is how long Chat Pile can run with their brand of sludgy noise rock. In fairness, they could do this in five years and still sound relevant. The Killing Joke dissonance of ‘Intruder’ is new territory for them. So is the unmelodious acoustic strum of ‘October All the Time’. Bands influenced by Big Black might be noisy and ugly, but they seldom scream through songs like Chat Pile.
They don’t always strike gold. ‘Influence’ feels like a tribute to Nirvana’s Bleach era and would be better as a one-off single in between albums rather than track eight here. Its redeeming feature is the trippy vocal melody in the chorus, which sounds as disconsolate as a person who lost their job last year and cannot imagine a future with gainful employment. The misanthropic gloom of ‘Family Funeral’ lives up to its title. Have you heard a bass riff as heavy and as stubborn as this in 2026? Vocalist Raygun Busch is in full Henry Rollins mode here, moving between spoken word confessions and shouts of “Where am I supposed to go now?” Every roar here has minimum technique and maximum pain.
The dominant mood of Who Loves the Sun is anxiety. But this is anxiety in its last stages of development before everything crashes and becomes meaningless (sometimes known as spiritual freedom in an atheist society). ‘Shrine’ is how you wanted Helmet to sound after they changed rock and metal music with 1992’s Meantime album. It takes their paranoia and disenchantment to its natural conclusion: life is a struggle until the end. There’ll be many lonely nights sitting in the dark of a dingy bedsit.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 04/09/2026
Record Label: The Flenser
Standout tracks: Deep Blue; Shrine; Family Funeral
Suggested Further Listening: Nirvana – Bleach (1989), Korn – Take a Look in the Mirror (2003), Kollapse – AR (2024)