Photo by Matthew Zagorski

Sub Pop’s catalog of 7″ singles is a thing of legend, inducting a select new class of eclectic and esoteric sounds from the underground each year into its storied curation, whether they’re already on the label or not. Some of these pages’ favorite outsiders like Irreversible Entanglements, Dummy, and FACS have been highlights in recent years, and this year, Chat Pile make their mark with their contribution, “Masks” (not to be confused with the 2019 God’s Country track, “The Mask”, or the Remove Your Skin Please track, “Mask”.)

While their predecessors in the club have oft did their own thing in their own vacuums, the Oklahoma City noise rock bastions really do their most to do that while channeling the spirit of an ugly, socially-weary Seattle underground that paved the way for bands like them decades later. That muffled opening is ugly on purpose, as it serves to give way to Raygun Busch’s gargling paranoia in cloak and dagger from. “Look around you now / They could be anywhere,” he shirks. Coming from that guy, you just know the villains he and Chat Pile see aren’t some figment of the imagination — their grungy guitar heroes warned them about these real bad guys years ago.

Chat Pile’s “Masks” b/w “Sifting” is available now on Sub Pop.