Feat: Gouge Away, Nightosphere
Writing and Photography by Trent "Pax" Lowder
This particular Tuesday night at Portland's own Hawthorne Theater was one of movie references, funny stories, and a heaping helping of Great Plains noise rock. The sold-out evening hosted Chat Pile, the Oklahoman gloom and doom metal band that has made waves with honest subject matter and a booming onslaught of chaotic rock. Supported by acts that boasted styles from buzzy shoegaze to ferocious screamo, the entire show was enchanting from start to finish.
Nightosphere
Hailing from Kansas City and mirroring the vast, monochromatic landscape of the area, Nightosphere broke the ice with an splendidly dreary amalgamation of noisy rock styles. The band has one full length LP from 2023, Katabasis (greek for “journey to the underworld,” fittingly enough) and a recent single painted with language critical of the U.S. healthcare system in “Poverty Policy,” and they consistently find themselves capably employing some wonky time signatures, plenty of murky grooves, and a dollop of ethereal despair throughout their catalog.
With multi-instrumentalist leads that exchanged and performed vastly different vocal duties between songs, the audience occasionally heard an intentionally quivering croon reminiscent of Amy Lee on a track like “Faim Devorante,” or a more hammering vocal assault like that of the last portion of “Poverty Police.” Whatever the case vocally, it was backed by an impressive mix of shoegazey fuzz, lawless dreamy havoc, and shades of Rainer Maria-esque emo riffs and rhythms.
Nightosphere has an effortless essence of coolness that is reflected in both their music and performance, that complimented Chat Pile’s goofy, industrial mayhem without sounding out of place. The three-piece ultimately was an amuse-bouche that introduced the rest of the performances in a way that had some coming away from the night thinking, “Yeah the main course was incredible, but that appetizer was really something!”
Gouge Away
Following Nightosphere, the energy quickly took a sharp turn towards the ceiling as Gouge Away and their Floridian strain of post-hardcore took over. A real shift from the pensive leaning vibe of the prior set, Gouge Away performed a fiery and incandescent brand of hardcore that relied less on pitchy vocals and more on intentional screaming and a whole lot of movement. Lead vocalist Christina Michelle probably set the high mark for steps on the night as she darted around the limited free space on stage while dipping between clean melodies and hefty screaming. Regardless of what flavor she employed on any given track–usually a little of both–she didn’t miss a beat, extremely impressive given the number of songs they squeezed into their set.
Although primarily focused on post-hardcore riffs, breakdowns, and energy, Gouge Away did some really successful things with prog-rock style outros and sample looping reminiscent of The Breeders or Sonic Youth–a concoction that would splice perfectly with some uncanny X-Files style CGI visuals. Songs like “Idealized”, taken from last year’s record Deep Sage, leaned more overtly into the post-hardcore sensibilities with wailing feedback and pounding breakdowns. But then a song like “Newtau” would settle the mood and focus on deep bass grooves, a slightly mellower vocal approach, and a beautifully layered cinematic outro section. “The Sharpening” was an incredible end to their set, making use of all sorts of different styles from post-punk to noise rock to downright screamo in a furiously powerful inferno. A band with an interesting backstory and a bit of cult following, Gouge Away added a ton of seething vitality to the night and did so in a strikingly fun way.
Chat Pile
The main attraction was obviously the noisy and cynically sincere metal band hailing from Oklahoma, Chat Pile. Coming off a late 2024 release, Cool World expanded on the themes–and the success–of their debut full-length God’s Country, and the group looked to bring the signature sludgy, incongruous sound found on both records to the stage. The performance was a spectacle, undoubtedly, but not spectacular by the overindulgent or glitzy definition of the word.
Only a song and a half into the set frontman Raygun Busch, in all his sweaty glory, stripped his shirt in a fashion reminiscent of Iggy Pop’s bare-chested presence. The visual resemblances to the Stooges lead didn’t stop there though as Raygun sauntered, stomped, and writhed around the stage–seemingly being tossed by the waves of distorted melody that Chat Pile has, rightfully, found recent success with. Sonically, Chat Pile utilizes a visceral groove, layered with chunky, laborious, and grinding cacophony, generously peppered with gut-wrenching harmonious climaxes so filled with passion that it can appear almost painful for the band to perform them. It’s beautiful and it’s horrifying. And then, suddenly, they’re discussing with the crowd how weird it is that they showed Bart Simpson’s dick in The Simpsons Movie. The music is otherworldly and lovecraftian but the conversation was down to earth, simple, and relatable. There is an air of improvisation in their live performances, admitting they don’t use a setlist and structuring their banter according to the city they’re playing in. But improv is, in a way, a means of navigating chaos and the band is well acquainted with the chaotic.
There is something particularly swampy about Chat Pile; their unique sound feels like it was comically doused in a bucket of molasses and subsequently coated in gravel. In a live setting, the guttural emotions of their songs are expounded upon. “Why” off the band’s 2022 record God’s Country is already inherently combative in its sound. Being a direct line of questioning toward systemic reasons why people live without houses while empty buildings loom ghoulishly over them, the track does not mince words. However, when the stage lights beam a burning deep red and Busch puffs out his chest to scream the lyrics, the stakes and the message feel vastly intensified. Similarly, the recording of the lead track off their latest release Cool World, “I Am Dog Now” is filled with agonistic howls. There’s a difference, though, between hearing a man screech through a speaker and seeing the man screeching, glistening with perspiration, head cocked back to the ceiling as a crowd before him mindlessly tumbles over one another. The pulsing rhythm sections of a song like their encore, “Always,” was clearly infectious, dissolving into the shimmering breathiness of a chorus that seemed to suspend the crowd momentarily, eventually cascading into an avalanche of energy towards the last moments.
Performance art feels too high-brow or snooty a description, though it was the sort of exhibition one could struggle to fully reconcile or understand but really wouldn’t want to miss. Everyone has had their “can’t look away from the car crash” moments. Perhaps that’s at the core of Chat Pile though; within their entrancingly odd stage presence, oscillation between humor and sincerity, brutally honest motifs of the human condition, and, of course, pounding blasts of emotive dissonance, there is something that everyone intrinsically and naturalistically wants to–and should–experience.
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