Chat Pile is a band whose formula, one that's sitting on the borders that metal, particularly sludge metal, has with noise rock and post-hardcore and post-punk, has been developing since their early EPs (and I'm still proud we got to cover them before they made it big), and they successfully used it to make two of the most downtrodden pieces of almost metal. But there's also been one significant detour, by way of it being music for the purpose of something else than the music itself, in the Tenkiller Motion Picture Soundtrack, one that found a more experimental and atmospheric version of the band's music.
In The Earth Again is not a soundtrack, thus the way it sets itself apart is less in its intent, even if there are significant parts of how it's structured and how it flows that make it feel like a soundtrack. It is, as a whole, more atmospheric and with some of its shorter songs having a vignette-like feel that does make it feel occasionally closer to the feel of a soundtrack. What does set it apart though is that it is a collaboration, one where it does feel like Chat Pile are close to being the leading act, but also one where their sound is pulled even further away from their usual than how it was on Tenkiller.
I have heard the term "American primitivism" before, first seeing some John Fahey records in some essential records list, but it's only been this year that I covered one such record. I have since stumbled upon Hayden Pedigo's other record this year, even if I didn't get to cover it, it was a name I was surprised to see seated alongside Chat Pile's for a full album. It does make a lot of sense, since a lot of the band's music is spiritually American, both in sounds and in the societal anxieties it evokes, so pairing it with a genre that literally has "American" in its name is fitting.
The kind of music that Hayden Pedigo is centered around the acoustic guitar, with a lot of the specific charm coming from the finger picking techniques employed. The way that works alongside the band's sound is by both adding an extra instrumental layer that expands the soundscape in the more conventionally sludge/noise rock-ish moments, and by pulling the sound as a whole closer towards something like post-rock and slowcore. There are tracks that are more or solely focused on Hayden's playing, like "I Got My Own Blunt To Smoke", or songs that feel like they could be mainline Chat Pile songs, like the album's 8 minutes centerpiece "The Matador". The album is at its most interesting when the two merge, like how the guitars add a very gloomy ambient americana to the crushing sludge heaviness of "Never Say Die", or how Raygun Busch turns into a slowcore singer under Hayden's guitar touches alongside the band's wall of sound on "Radioactive Dreams", or the soul crushing balladry of "A Tear For Lucas".
In The Earth Again's flow is quite weird, in a way that makes each song need the rest of the album to make sense, and in a way that makes its relatively short runtime of 36 minutes hold so many ideas and different sounds, a lot of which feel like they would need more space than they have here in order to feel fully explored. The upside is that Chat Pile tried their hand at them and succeeded, and they'll have plenty of space on further albums to explore them.
