God's Country

God's Country is the debut studio album by American rock band Chat Pile. The album was released on July 29, 2022, through The Flenser Records. It received universal critical acclaim, including the "Best New Music" honor from Pitchfork, and earned honors on several publications' year-end lists. Background and themes Following the release of two EPs in 2019 and a cover of Sepultura's "Roots Bloody Roots" for a compilation by the band's record label, Chat Pile announced their debut album God's Country on May 24, 2022, alongside its lead single "Slaughterhouse". Subsequent singles "Why" and "Wicked Puppet Dance" were also released prior to the album. The band performed a show in its hometown of Oklahoma City on the day of the album's release and also immediately sold out two October dates in New York City. The album cover is a photograph of the Oklahoma County Detention Center, where eleven people died in 2022 before the album's release. Bassist Stin said, "That punitive, authoritarian hand is always right over you at any given time." God's Country is centered around real-world themes of horror. "Slaughterhouse" describes a 2014 beheading that occurred at a local food processing plant, while "The Mask" is about a 1974 mass murder of six restaurant employees in Oklahoma City. Vocalist and songwriter Raygun Busch described "Why", a song about homelessness, as "the scariest song on the record" and "Pamela" as "extremely personal in a lot of ways despite essentially being Friday the 13th fanfiction." "Wicked Puppet Dance" touches on drug addiction. Closing track "grimace_smoking_weed.jpg" took its title from a list of options for one of the band's earlier EPs. It was released a six-minute long demo in 2021 but was transformed into a nine-minute song for the album, and Busch's lyrics were inspired by the films In a Glass Cage and Mysterious Skin.