“In Guitar Center, people would think I was playing for the first time – but I promise you, my band makes better music than 80% of them”: Meet Chat Pile, the sludge metallers shouting down the “tone lords” and “goobers” ruining guitar culture
The self-taught DIY quartet are making seismic waves across the noise rock scene – and they’re doing it with cult electrics, solid-state amps and a baritone that’s neither a “djent stick” nor “a surf guitar made of plastic”
(Image credit: Matthew Zagorski)
Named after the toxic gravel heaps left by mining lead, Chat Pile formed in 2019 to spawn music no less ugly and imposing. Their 2022 debut God’s Country captured the bleakness of Midwest life through atmospheric and dissonant noise rock, while their sophomore album Cool World looks at the interconnected nature of global violence.
Whether playing a bone-rattling blend of noise-rock, sludge and nu-metal, country songs on horror soundtracks, or covers of Sepultura, RATM and Nirvana, Chat Pile always sound like themselves. Bassist Stin and guitarist Luther Manhole agree that their quintessential riff is Rat Boy – a frantic run in an asymmetrical yet pummeling time signature – nicknamed The Spider Song due to the riff’s crazy fingering.
But it’s Funny Man from Cool World that Stin considers peak Chat Pile: a perversely jaunty riff that gives way to a crushing onslaught in the chorus. “If I was to show an alien one thing that represented our band… that’s the song I would pick,” he says.
The group’s origins date to the mid-’90s, when Stin and his drummer brother Cap’n Ron got into alt-rock, bought pawn-shop guitars and played with “little junky school bands in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma and, after moving to the city in the 2000s, in the underground punk and metal scenes.”
Meanwhile, Manhole dabbled in piano, marching band drums and playing bass “in stupid punk bands” until he decided to learn guitar “because guitar is cooler, or whatever I thought at age 14.” Aside from two weeks of lessons and a Beatles’ chord book, his rhythmic and searing atonal style is self-taught. “I learned songs by tabs, played by ear and jammed with people for like 20 years,” he says.
Stin is even more self-deprecating. “This is the irony of us getting interviewed here: I was obsessed with Guitar World as a teenager – and I didn’t learn a goddamn thing from it!” He adds: “It goes to show, a lot of the time, taste is way more important than technical ability.”
Come 2019, Stin and Luther found themselves at a low ebb. “I hadn’t played in a few years, and it’d been even longer since I’d been in a band where I was writing,” recalls the guitarist. “You need to check so many boxes – you could have similar taste and be good at your instruments, but if there’s no chemistry…”
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So when he approached Stin, it was with muted expectations. “I said, ‘Let’s see if we can even jam together.’ We started out playing to drum loops from GarageBand – and then it just spiraled.”
Turning his attention to guitar and gear culture in 2024, Stin rails against a particular type of player he calls “tone lords,” explaining: “They’re guitar guys who master all these sweeps and crazy bullshit, and sit with their little [Focusrite] Scarlett and YouTube videos, then complain about how rock music is dead.
“And it’s like, ‘Yeah – because of goobers like you who have killed what makes the electric guitar cool and the power it has!’ If I went to Guitar Center to test out a guitar, people would think I was playing for the first time – but I promise you my band makes better music than 80 percent of those dudes.
“It comes down to taste and feeling. You don’t have to be a virtuoso to find good applications for guitar music.”
(Image credit: Matthew Zagorski)
“All that said,” he continues, “I’m very proud of the set up I have. Since the beginning I’ve played Peavey T-40s. They’re known as the ‘poor man’s Rickenbacker’ – but I think Peaveys sound better and are more versatile.” He runs into a Tronographic Rusty Box, a Sunn Coliseum Slave power amp and an ’80s Trace Elliot 4x10.
Younger players should avoid chasing the dragon of perfect tone. You don’t need to spend a gajillion dollars to sound great
Stin
Luther started on a Peavey T-60, but its 25.5in scale struggled with drop A, and he couldn’t find a baritone that wasn’t a “djent stick or a surf guitar made of plastic.” He’d always wanted a Music Man, and eventually snapped up a limited-edition Axis Super Sport baritone with a TV static finish on Reverb.
His pedalboard has a Suhr Riot, a Hall of Fame and an Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy – safely skirting ‘tone lord’ territory. He jokes: “Cap’n Ron works for Keeley, and we have so much access to pedals and cool shit. But Stin uses a Rusty Box and a tuner, and I use only four pedals – one of which is also a tuner!”
(Image credit: Matthew Zagorski)
He’s recorded with an Ampeg V-4, V-22 and a Fender Super Six, but finds them too heavy and finnicky for touring. After seeing bands getting great tone playing Quilter solid-states, he and Stin made the switch from tubes and never looked back. “The Quilter Tone Block 202 is essentially a Fender Twin in a box you can fit in your backpack,” he reports.
Stin offers some advice to those in startup mode: “Younger players should avoid chasing the dragon of perfect tone. You don’t need to spend a gajillion dollars to sound great. All you need is to find a couple of essential pieces, simplify your system – and you can sound amazing.”
Dan started guitar in his early teens – playing every day on a sunburst Les Paul copy he still regrets selling – and has never stopped. He read English at Cambridge, spent several years in Australia and Japan, then worked as a Japanese to English translator for over a decade. His fiction, essays, translations, and reviews of books and live music have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Independent and Times Literary Supplement, among others. He fell in love with playing bass after the pandemic, and now performs in a sludgy post-metal band in Cardiff, Wales.
