With their debut album God’s Country (Echoes and Dust’s 2022 Album of the Year), Chat Pile won a whole host of fans and well deserved plaudits with their unhinged and cathartic sludge fuelled noise rock that simply purged your soul as you listened. The album was uneasy listening at its most intense and sounded all the better for it. While Chat Pile are working on the long awaited follow up to God’s Country, they have blessed us with the soundtrack to the indie film Tenkiller and it is pleasing to note that it makes just as intense listening as their debut record.
From pounding industrial to all out noise to more sublime passages, the intense nature of the music of Chat Pile is certainly at the forefront here, even when it is at a gentler pace, and with those their music loses none of its power, gaining it in various menacing ways.
Tracks like the fabulous Helmet meets Godflesh industrial stomps of ‘The Fabulous Shitheads’ and ‘OK’ and the dirge of ‘Punishment Box’ definitely fall into the more extreme end of things that Chat Pile have made their name doing while the likes of ‘Becks Theme’ and ‘Kids’ are definitely more laid back but still undeniably add to the whole atmospheric nature of the soundtrack and the whole things flows coherently sonically.
Tenkiller is mostly instrumental and like all great soundtracks creates a great atmosphere, it is more lo-fi than cinematic for the most part but this foreboding and full of dread music suits the whole album well. Only the closing title track features any vocals and incidentally is possibly the only track that sounds like anything from God’s Country, but it still fits in well here.
Eclecticism is ultimately the order of the day here as all sorts of bases are covered musically through this soundtrack and you definitely won’t find as big a difference in sound and atmosphere as you do between the actually uncomfortable terror of ‘The Return Of Badman’ and the jaunty country twang of ‘Lake Time (Mr Rodan)’ that immediately follows it for example and that is the beauty of what Chat Pile have come up with here, the sounds explored show this is a band that aren’t afraid to experiment with their music.
While this isn’t a Chat Pile album proper, it more than fills the gap between God’s Country and the impending new album and definitely adds to the upward trajectory that the music of Chat Pile deserves, adding that crucial experimental edge to try band’s brilliant music.
