I grew up in a highly insular environment, never knowing—let alone interacting with—the outside world, in part due to my family’s history with war and struggle in Vietnam.

I can’t fully understand their experiences, but knowing the world often meant witnessing the violence of military personnel from France, Japan, the United States, and and other countries. They have told me stories of girls and young women covering themselves in mud to try to avoid rape by French soldiers during colonial rule, and people leaving Vietnam by sea in small boats in hope of a life beyond figuring out how to eat that day. My family understandably doesn’t talk about much of it now. Many may have felt like they could only manage to look after themselves and, if they’re lucky, immediate family members.

The result: a geopolitical history of trauma that reverberates with my own.

Music, movies, and television cracked my window a bit, and continue to serve as a way for me to try to peek into the experiences, feelings, and dreams others share with the world. Roger Ebert’s concept of a movie as a “machine that generates empathy” guided me into politics, and eventually to a job writing about it.

The noise rock and metal of the band Chat Pile is one of those bodies of art. Chat Pile makes art that pushes us to confront our world. The band’s 2022 single “Why” was a breakthrough, with the direct opening lyrics of “Why do people have to live outside / In the brutal heat or when it’s below freezing?” The band’s previous album, 2024’s Cool World, is an antiwar record—the track “Shame” decries the ongoing Gaza genocide and the shame of all wars.

Who Loves the Sun, Chat Pile’s latest album, came out Labor Day weekend. The cover art is a photo taken by bassist Stin of a charred building and a tent, with the 50-story corporate headquarters of the oil and gas producer Devon Energy—which is set to move out of Oklahoma City, where the band is from, to Houston, putting local jobs and the future of the building into question—looming in the background. The album challenges apathy to atrocity through tracks on climate change and labor struggle among imagery of vampires and masks.

Chat Pile’s closer suggests that in the event of human collapse, the natural world will continue, even if forever damaged.

© Mother Jones