Photo by Juliette Boulay

Chat Pile’s inspo is thematically spiritual, even if unbelieving, and can be traced to their obsessions with American horror culture and extreme religiosity where each appear to be interchangeable. That real world symbiosis is what elicited the discomfort it did on last year’s breakthrough debut, God’s Country, when observed through the Oklahoma City quartet’s noise rock landslides. Leading into this holy week observed by Christians celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it’s unsurprising that Chat Pile would be drawn into that theme of inherent barbarism where prophecy, suffering, sacrifice, and the divine converge on “Cut”, the first preview from Brothers In Christ, the Oklahoma four-piece’s forthcoming split with Kansas City thrash punks, Nerver. “Faithless / I wandered / For years / You weren’t now / Nothing,” Raygun Busch snarls, stumbling through woods which may very well be Lucifer’s desert, searching for an intervention. It’s lurch of sinisterly loud rock echoes his laments. “And your voice was God’s voice / It was God’s voice / And it cut me.” In this case, the passion of Chat Pile finds its higher power and yet, remains forsaken.

Chat Pile & Nerver’s Brothers In Christ will be released April 14th on Reptilian Records / The Ghost Is Clear Records.