Song Highlight: Chat Pile - grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg

Today is a special day for anyone enthralled by noisy and harrowing music, because it is the release date of Chat Pile’s first full length album, God’s Country. Chat Pile resurrect the churning noise rock menace of Big Black and the Jesus Lizard and combine it with the feedback-drenched sludge of Eyehategod. As I mentioned in my post about their song Dallas Beltway, Chat Pile have a knack for writing songs that are actually unnerving. They tackle subjects that are not uncommon to extreme metal bands, like murder and depravity, but they are able to present it in a way that does not feel exploitative. These are not subjects that they are presenting to seem edgy or “cool.” They are drawing attention to some of the wretchedness that festers in the United States of America, and society in general.

The final track of God’s Country is a punishing 9 minute epic that is humorously titled “grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg”. It follows the increasingly erratic and distressed rantings of the narrator who is getting high in his room, and being haunted by the presence of a “purple man”. Based on the song title, I think we are to take the “purple man” to be the McDonald’s purple mascot, Grimace.

“Normal night

It should be

Just trying to live a

Normal life

OK?

It was the image that brought me back but

Listen, I don't want your presence

Purple man

Smoking weed in my bedroom

Don’t want you

I don't need you

Don't think I’d forget

You hurt me in a past life

And you were so strange once

At least stranger than you are now”

As the song progresses, the narrator turns towards self loathing and a desire to put an end to his suffering:

"Purple man

Stop coming into my room

Stop looking at things that aren't meant for

You

Purple man

Stop coming into my room

Stop looking at things that aren’t meant for

You

I'm twisted

And frail

Broken up

I'm purple

I'm purple man, too

I’m purple man, too

I'm purple man, too

I'm trying to kill myself

If you don't mind

That's why I locked the door

I just need some privacy

If you mind I'm gonna

Open the window now

And jump out

Face first

I know we're not that high

But if I do it right

I could break my neck

I don't want to be alive

I don't want to be alive”

The song ends with the narrator deciding to go through with his plan, and shouting the name of the “purple man”:

“No more

No more

Face first

I don't want it

But here it is

Grimace.”

While the concept of being tormented by one of McDonald’s mascots is humorously ridiculous, the narrator’s anguish sounds chillingly genuine.

Buy Chat Pile’s music here.