Chat Pile—from left, Cap’n Ron, Raygun Busch, Stin, and Luther Manhole—are at the crest of a new wave of angry American guitar music.
This isn’t terribly marketable music, and yet Chat Pile are one of the hottest heavy American bands of this moment—and one of the more successful horror-movie-inspired noise-rock bands ever to emerge from the American plains. There are a few ways to understand Chat Pile’s success. It takes a lucky convergence of tastes and aesthetics to turn those influences into a project that can reach beyond a local scene. And in the years since forming in 2019, it’s become clear that the sludgy OKC band have formulated a winning combination of sledge-hammering riffs, hypnotic grooves, unnerving vocals, and even more unnerving lyrics.
After a couple chilling EPs, Chat Pile’s 2022 debut LP, God’s Country, broke the band around the world. Songs from that record have nearly 2 million streams on Spotify, and the headlining tour behind it featured sold-out shows in places they had never played before. “When we first started, people wouldn’t book us here in Oklahoma City,” says bassist Stin. “As soon as things started taking off more nationally, that’s when people started coming around locally.”
“It’s subtle, but these things that are around you all the time…. When you open up your eyes to them, it’s kind of horrifying.”—Stin
The band’s new full-length, Cool World, is a potent expansion of their realist sound. It’s also a demonstration that each member of Chat Pile, all of whom use pseudonyms in the project, is as important as the other. They are vocalist Raygun Busch, guitarist Luther Manhole, drummer Cap’n Ron, and Stin. (The latter two are brothers.) Lead single and opener “I Am Dog Now” starts with a cursed 6/8 riff before dipping to 5/4 as Busch’s bleeding-out-in-a-bear-trap wails enter. On “Funny Man,” another single, Manhole’s spidery, plinking verse riff (a clean-tone trick he plays across the record) is just one set piece in a twisted tableau of doom, metal, and grunge. Lead single “Masc” might be the record’s most compelling four minutes. Cap’n Ron’s delicious beat sets the scene, and Stin’s gristly, percussive bass locks in with it to sway into a pulsing nu-metal groove.
Stin thinks part of the band’s popularity is related to their ability to articulate, in both word and sound, this sociopolitical moment. “A lot of that is anxiety and dread and fear, and I think we’re quite literally speaking on those feelings that people have been feeling for quite a while now,” says Stin. “A lot of whatever popularity we’re experiencing is luck and being in the right place at the right time, but I think a part of that luck is moved along by our band being able to express the feelings a lot of people are having.”
“It’s not just us,” notes Manhole. “I feel like angry music is coming back.”
Initially, Stin and Manhole had the idea to start a “heavier” music project, something along the lines of Godflesh or the Jesus Lizard, with bits of hardcore and slam metal, too. (“Honestly, we’re trying to make sort of the most ignorant type of music that you could think of,” Stin jokes.) Raygun and Stin had talked for years about forming a band in the vein of Steve Albini’s Big Black, which meshed with the Albini-influenced noise rock that Stin and Manhole had been jamming. But they knew each other as friends for years before forming—a bond they say is more important than musical compatibility. “We trust each other’s taste and artistic vision,” says Stin. “It’s not like we all think identically. It helps when you are with people you’ve known forever and who share similar values, you understand their worldview. That really helps foster a safe place, artistically.”
Like the band’s other releases, Cool World was recorded in the shed behind Stin’s Oklahoma City house. They don’t use metronomes or excessive plugins—just a simple combination of Shure mics and a basic interface.
The band records (live and without a metronome, Manhole says) in a shed behind Stin’s house, which has been converted into their studio and jam space. That means they have all the latitude and time they need to make the art they want. “It’s cheaper for us to do it this way,” says Stin, “but it’s also how we’ve learned to work as a band.” This time, they asked Ben Greenberg from industrial-metal band Uniform to mix the LP, but they still recorded it all on their own—using just some Shure mics through a four-channel Scarlett interface into a Mac.
“So much mainstream rock music that you hear is also recorded on a laptop, but it’s so doused through all these plugins and quantizing and stuff that it’s not even human music anymore,” says Stin. “With us, I use so little effects. Even if you have all this junky consumer gear that you’re using to record your music, the trick is just try to make it sound as natural as you can.”
Aside from three weeks of lessons in seventh grade, Manhole learned guitar by ear and tabs. Unwound’s Justin Trosper and Gorguts’ Luc Lemay were major influences, alongside XTC’s Andy Partridge and Dave Gregory. When Manhole writes, it’s almost always about feel. “We write through improv,” he says. “Usually, I have a 10-second riff that I came up with at home. Sometimes it’s more of a rhythm. Maybe Stin has a bassline that he thought of. We’ll just play it for 30 minutes straight and do variations. I play through the sour notes and see what sounds cool, try different shapes that I like to do over things. I don’t know a lot of the actual chords that I’m playing, but I know shapes I like.”
Stin's Gear
Stin (left) and Manhole (right) keep things simple with their gear collections: They like clean, natural tones that they can tweak and distort for just the right sounds.
Photo by Bayley Hanes
Bass
- Peavey T-40
Amps
- Sunn Coliseum Slave (studio)
- Quilter Bass Block 802 (live)
- Trace Elliot 4x10 redline cab with horns
Effects
- Boss Tuner
- Tronographic Rusty Box
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalt (.060–.125) (5-string set without the .040 string)
- Ernie Ball Everlast Picks (.73 mm orange)
Stin takes all the photos for Chat Pile’s albums—another key element of the total artistic product. While they feel inexplicably horror-indebted, they’re simply photos of everyday sights around Oklahoma City which “portray the kind of decay and doom and gloom of living in the southern plains. Within that is kind of this horror. It’s subtle, but these things that are around you all the time… When you open up your eyes to them, it’s kind of horrifying.” Stin spotted the enormous cross on the cover of Cool World in the parking lot of a megachurch north of Oklahoma City. “It’s just kind of this testament to this capitalistic approach to religion and how, especially here in the Bible Belt, it dictates your life and every level politically and socially,” he explains.
Listening to Chat Pile can feel like being trapped in the heat and grease and cogs and pistons of a hulking, relentless machine. Maybe the scariest bit is that that’s not too far off from the truth.
Luther Manhole's Gear
Guitars
Music Man BFR Axis Super Sport Baritone
Peavey T-60 with an Aluminati Guitars aluminum neck
Amps
Fender Super Six (studio)
Ampeg V4 (studio)
Quilter Tone Block 202 (live)
Ampeg VT-22 cab
Ampeg 4x10 cab made from a gutted Ampeg VT-40 combo amp
Effects
TC Electronic Hall of Fame
Suhr Riot
Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy
TC Electronic PolyTune
Strings & Picks
Ernie Ball Mammoth Slinky (.012–.062)
Ernie Ball Everlast Picks (.73 mm orange)
Take in the mesmerizing, unsettling energy of Chat Pile’s shows via this capture of their entire set at Outbreak Fest on June 29, 2024 in Manchester, U.K.
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
Yves Jarvis’ methods for simulating effects include using a whammy bar while riding his guitar’s volume for reversed guitar sounds. But many are done the old-fashioned way: manipulating tape on his TEAC reel-to-reel as it passes from one head to another.
In fact, Jarvis chooses one tuning for an entire tour. He does that although each of his songs first comes to life—as it is being written and recorded—in an original song-specific tuning. But tunings, at that early stage, are just compositional devices. Once a song is recorded, its tuning is forgotten, and when it’s time to hit the road, he relearns each song in the new tuning chosen for that tour. If he decides to reprise an older song, he learns it up yet again in that new tuning as well.
All that learning and tuning keeps Jarvis on his toes, which he finds exciting. “I get stuck in too many patterns, too many shapes, so I throw myself off,” he says. “I love being thrown off.”
Yves Jarvis - "Bootstrap Jubilee"
What was the tuning Jarvis used on his recent summer tour? Good question.
“I’m in D–A–D-something, that’s for sure,” he says. To figure out the rest, he brought his laptop—we spoke via Zoom—into another room with a piano. “Someone once asked me about my tuning at a show, and people think I’m being coy, but I actually don’t know what it is. I know how to get there with a guitar, but I don’t know what the notes are.”
He tuned up his guitar by ear, sat at the piano, and figured it out. It didn’t take long. His summer 2022 tuning was D–A–D–E–A–C#. It won’t be that again.
That type of unpredictable spontaneity is how Jarvis does everything. That explains his addiction to cheap gear, his aversion to pedals—which he never uses—and why he didn’t even bother with an amp on The Zug, his latest release, which he recorded at ArtScape, the artist-friendly place he was living in at the time. “It’s a subsidized-for-artists condo in Toronto [where rents are sky high] and the building is full of artists,” he says.
Yves Jarvis recorded his fourth album, The Zug, at Toronto’s ArtScape, a subsidized living space for artists. The Zug is a masterclass in lo-fi guitar orchestration on a limited budget.
The Zug is Jarvis’ fourth release since 2016 under the moniker Yves Jarvis (Jarvis is his mother’s maiden name), and prior to that he released the critically acclaimed Tenet under the name Un Blonde. In 2019, he was longlisted for a Polaris Music Prize. The Zug is an intimate collection of songs, and that means intimate, as in up close and personal. The vocals sound as if he’s whispering in your ear and letting you in on a joke. Jarvis plays all the instruments himself, and that includes an array of alternative timbres and sounds. “Noise was an issue,” he says about the challenges of recording in a condominium. “Nevertheless, I was playing the drums with chopsticks, but that was for feel, not for noise suppression.”
Chopsticks aside, most of the effects on The Zug were done with guitar. On songs like “At the Whims” and “Enemy,” Jarvis employs dramatic swells and backwards-sounding leads, which complement the more subtle fingerpicking and gentle warbles on “Prism Through Which I Perceive” and “You Offer a Mile.” The album is also a masterclass in lo-fi orchestration. Check out “Why” and, especially, “Stitchwork,” with its string-sounding pulses and layered effects that are, in a simple way, almost Beatle-esque. All done with guitar, and on a very limited budget.
But lo-fi also has its share of challenges. “I need to invest in a vocal mic because it would be nice to not have to do 100 takes of the same thing,” Jarvis says about his idiosyncratic multi-layered vocal sound. “It started out as an aesthetic thing, being that I wanted to create this texture that was inspired by D’Angelo—many voices at once, perfectly stacked. But then, layering became a necessity because I was not pleased with the single takes. In order for all the nuances of my voice to translate to the recording, I have to have multiple layers.”
“But I’m not averse, at all, to effects. I have just always gotten off on forcing myself to simulate my own effects.”
That labor-intensive effort is how Jarvis gets his guitar tones as well. As mentioned, he doesn’t use pedals. “I can’t imagine looking down at a pedalboard, frankly,” he says. “I think I’m getting there in my growth as an artist where I see the potential of using pedals. But that’s precisely the problem—too much potential. Although I see where I could benefit with experimenting with new tech.”
The distortion sounds were created by running his guitar into an old TEAC reel-to-reel machine—and a single, loved, beaten reel of tape—and then into the open-source DAW Audacity, which is ultimately where everything ends up. “It’s nice to manipulate sound with such an analog piece,” he says about his tape machine. “I also like stretching and distorting the tape. I’ve never really used a different reel of tape. It’s been the same reel on there for years and years and years, and the degradation of that reel has really played into the sound of the guitar. I think the best example of it on the record is at the end of ‘What?’ That electric guitar solo is the most quintessential sound of my TEAC, for sure.”
But Jarvis’ aversion to pedals doesn’t come from some purist notion of tone craft. Rather, similar to choosing a new tuning for each tour, he sees limitations as a creative tool, albeit with ideological strings attached. “Constraints are very helpful for me,” he says. “I don’t like options—especially in our culture today where everything is custom. You go into a restaurant, and you can customize your order, I hate that. Tell me what to get, or don’t tell me what to get, but constrain me. Two options are all I need. That’s where the experimentation comes from—from some sort of physical parameter like playing percussion backwards, for example, so that the feel is different—just little things like that. But I’m not averse, at all, to effects. I have just always gotten off on forcing myself to simulate my own effects.”
Yves Jarvis’ Gear
Yves Jarvis plays solo acoustic at the Colony in Woodstock, New York, in February 2022. His acoustic is a Fender he bought for $50 in Gravenhurst, Ontario.
Photo by Michael O’Neal
Guitars
- Fender acoustic
- Hondo Formula I
- Yellow S-style
Recording/Sound Manipulation
- Tascam Portastudio 424 MkIII
- TEAC Reel to Reel
Strings
- Any brand, heavy gauge, usually starting with a .012 for the high E
Jarvis’ methods for simulating effects aren’t completely outlandish. His reversed guitar sounds—which you can hear on The Zug’s “Enemy”—are done with a whammy bar and riding his guitar’s volume knob. Some of his delay-like effects are done the old-fashioned way: manipulating tape as it passes from one head to another.
Yet despite his embrace of the reel-to-reel, his first love is a Tascam Portastudio 424 MkIII multitrack cassette recorder. “I’ve gone through maybe a dozen Tascam 424 MkIIIs,” he says. “That’s the only piece of gear that I know about, which is crazy. Ten years ago, I got them for $100 bucks a pop every time. Now they’re $1,000 bucks.”
Another outgrowth of his quest for unpredictability is how Jarvis uses a capo, which he often places high up on the neck at around the 8th or 10th fret. He prefers it like that, with the strings taut, similar to a smaller-scale instrument like a ukulele or mandolin. It opens up a very different world of harmonics and other sonic possibilities, although he has more pedestrian reasons for using a capo, too, which is the difference in how he sings live versus the studio.
Once Jarvis records a song, its tuning is forgotten. When it’s time to hit the road, he relearns each song in a new tuning chosen for that tour. His 2022 tuning was D–A–D–E–A–C#.
Photo by Michael O’Neal
“I like my voice to be like a whisper on recordings, but live I like to really sing,” he says. “That’s the thing: The textural qualities that I’m looking to lay down on the record are not at all similar to what I’m trying to do live. Live, I like to be clear-eyed vocally, and with recordings I want it to be more of a whisper. That’s the main impetus for the capo, too. I usually perform the song much higher than the recording—although I also use a capo because I usually use pretty shitty gear—and I like the guitar to have that twang, that sharpness of a mandolin or something very taut.”
In Jarvis’ telling, that sharpness can take on a somewhat mystical feel as well. He’s searching for a certain synchronized resonance between his voice and the instrument’s natural vibrations. “I’m definitely making an effort to match those resonances,” he says. “The guitar on the chest, the guitar on the belly, and amplifying that, and amplifying each other. I feel that is a very deconstructive process in the studio, and then live it’s something that I’m trying to have as a unit, a package of songwriting.”
And just in case you think Jarvis doesn’t do enough to avoid becoming complacent, his instruments of choice are usually low-budget starter guitars, which, obviously, come with their own issues and quirks.
“I’m excited to plug in a cool guitar that I just got back. It’s a guitar I’ve had since I was a little kid: an electric Hondo. It’s an Explorer shape. It’s red and it’s got all these stripes on it.”
And his electric?
“I’m excited to plug in a cool guitar that I just got back,” he says. “It’s a guitar I’ve had since I was a little kid: an electric Hondo. It’s an Explorer shape. It’s red and it’s got all these stripes on it. I left it at my buddy’s when I lived in Calgary as a kid, and then he had it for 10-plus years. He fixed it up for me. He just gave it back and it sounds amazing. That’s a guitar that I’m really excited to have back because it’s just so dirty and gritty and sounds just straight off Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which is a beacon for me in terms of electric guitar tone.”
It’s not a gimmick. Jarvis is a unique, forward-thinking artist, and, ultimately, the tricks he employs make for engaging, compelling music—music that takes on new life with every retelling. “Because of the improvisational nature of the production, relearning my music and restructuring it in a more traditional format is really an exciting thing for me,” he says.
It’s exciting for his listeners, too.
Yves Jarvis - Full Performance (Live on KEXP at Home)
In this intimate acoustic performance recorded for Seattle’s KEXP radio, Yves Jarvis plays five songs with assistance from his faithful capo.
