February 25th 2025, Hawthorn Theatre Portland Oregon. The theatre is not just bustling, it is practically buzzing, swarmed with people pushed to the barricade dripping in silver industrial jewelry and all-black attire. Platform boots, creative makeup, bright colored hair. A sea of people who look just like me.
Chat Pile, on their “Cool World Tour West” are accompanied by Florida hardcore Gouge Away and Kansas City’s post-hardcore Nightosphere, Portland being their 9th stop.
The Oklahoma City-based noise rock quartet, known for their unfiltered and raw sound, captivated the audience with a setlist that traversed their discography. They opened with “The New World,” setting a powerful tone for the evening, and proceeded to play tracks like “Shame,” “Frownland,” and “Why.” The set concluded with an encore performance of “Anywhere.”
Frontman Raygun Busch’s stage presence was notably engaging; barefoot, shirtless, erratic, organized chaos. His interactions between songs were riddled with discussions about movies, notably ones relating to Oregon, which added a small personal touch to their performance. Busch’s is well known for his film ramblings on stage, so it was no surprise to the cult audience.
The band’s synergy was evident, with each member contributing to the overall sonic assault that defines Chat Pile’s live shows. Guitarist Luther Manhole’s riffs, combined with Stin’s prominent bass lines and Cap’n Ron’s drumming, created a wall of sound that quite literally made the walls of the venue shake.
What really made this performance especially notable was their performance of grimmace_smoking_weed.jpeg. In the first chord the audience erupted. The 9-minute song from their first full-length LP, “God’s Country”. The industrial instrumentation paired with Busch’s erratic stage presence and direct vocals truly was a transient experience.
“Listen, I don’t want your presence
Purple man smoking weed in my bedroom
Don’t want you
I don’t need you
And don’t think I’d forget
That you hurt me in a past life
And you were so strange once
At least stranger than you are now
At least stranger than you are now”
The narrator knows the weed-smoking Grimace all too well, a figure etched into memory like a riff that lingers too long. He aches to leave behind the ache Grimace carries. Though the pain he represents is buried “you hurt me in a past life” Grimace drifts back again and again, shedding his strangeness and slipping into the ordinary. And yet, the more familiar he becomes, the more his presence darkens, growing heavier with every return, a ghost refusing to dissolve into silence.
For those dragged into the storm of paranoia, mania, or intrusive thought, it becomes nearly impossible to separate the noise from the self to tell where the mind ends and the fear begins. To admit a desire to become the purple man is less a confession than a coping spell, an effort to smooth over the jagged clash between ego and obsession. It’s a gesture toward reconciliation, a recognition that even in the most chaotic loops of thought, there’s a sliver of truth. A purple monster – to shadow the whispers, under the noise.
I think in essence, the song gets to the core of what this band is. Performance art. Chaos, as a vessel for poetry. Noise to demand a message.
The band is loud, it’s blunt, it’s a violent stance against the reality of life, the core of artistry.
