Chat Pile's 'I Am Dog Now' Music Video Had Tons of Denton Ties. Here's Why.

The suited-up preacher delivers a sermon, shakes hands with his devoted congregation. Cut to: shots of him in a white, blood-stained dress shirt, snarling like a rabid dog — and dragging a dead body in a trash bag.

So goes the gripping music video for “I Am Dog Now” by Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile and filmed-directed-edited by Will Mecca, a Denton-based photographer and videographer.

The video, published on YouTube in mid-July, has attracted more than 60,000 views and transmits a deep sense of unease. It watches like a cursed videotape that you found in an abandoned Golden Corral parking lot. Part of you even might want to turn it off — but can’t.

Chat Pile is winning over critics around the globe with its refreshing, sludgy brand of noise rock. The band’s second full-length album, Cool World, comes out next month, with “I Am Dog Now” serving as the first single.

Mecca isn’t the only Dentonite attached to the video. The band noted in a post on X (Twitter) that it’s “chock full of our cool friends from Denton, TX.”

Have you checked out the 'I Am Dog Now' video directed by Will Mecca? It rocks and it's chock full of our cool friends from Denton, TX. It also features the chat piles in Picher, OK from which we take our name: https://t.co/ErXT8PafM5

— Chat Pile (@ChatPileBand) July 17, 2024

Fellow Lil’ D scenesters might recognize some of the congregants, including Mae Dereszynski (Godot, Aznable, Omnimorph), Jake Garlick (Average Life Expectancy, Please Advise) and Donovan Ford (Skimp, Whep, Infernal Legions of Mordor) — plus the preacher, Miles DeBruin (Two Knights, Skimp, Infernal Legions of Mordor), to name a few.

In addition to his visual work, Mecca has played in bands Baja & The Blasters (RIP) and Infernal Legions of Mordor. He’s got a resale booth at Denton’s Downtown Mini Mall and books shows with No Coast. He’s worked with Dallas death metal juggernauts Frozen Soul and Fort Worth crossover-thrash supergroup Fugitive.

Mecca has made three videos for Chat Pile; the others were for “Dallas Beltway” and “Cut.” The latter, he notes, helped land him a vid with East Coast grindcore outfit Full of Hell.

“So when that was finalized, I kind of reached out to the Chat Pile guys, and I'm like, ‘Hey, I really appreciate the opportunity y'all gave me letting me do the ‘Cut’ video. Because of this, I'm getting other gigs,’” Mecca says.

“And they replied with, ‘Oh, cool. You want to do another one for the new album?’”

Where Was ‘I Am Dog Now’ Filmed?

Mecca says he shot “I Am Dog Now”’ at Fort Worth’s Southside Preservation Hall and in Picher, Oklahoma, where Chat Pile derives its name. (Chat piles, mountains of toxic waste from lead and zinc mining, litter the now-abandoned town.)

The Picher shoot wrapped quickly, Mecca says. Along with DeBruin and PA Izzy Stacy, he filmed for about an hour before heading back to North Texas: “Then it was just, you know, getting over-caffeinated and editing for three days straight.”

Even though Mecca isn’t from Oklahoma, he’d often trek there for punk shows. Chat Pile bassist Stin, real name Austin Tackett, says the two sparked up a conversation one day over the Dentonite’s Sepultura shirt.

Tackett says the band won’t appear in its own videos — and if they ever did, they certainly wouldn’t act like they’re playing instruments.

“Nobody wants to see a bunch of middle-aged guys pretending to rock out or whatever, so that's part of it,” Tackett says. “... And I feel like having a traditional performance video is such a standard idea that we just don't want to dip our toes into it, really.”

The band has another rule about videos, he adds: No literal, narrative interpretations of what a song means. They’d rather keep it “a little murky and esoteric.”

Mecca says he pitched the visuals for “I Am Dog Now” as a preacher going insane. You see him proselytizing to his cult-like followers in one moment. Next, he's pacing around in an empty, rotting church.

The video flashes between those dichotomous realities, and Mecca says it’s up to the viewer to decide which is true.

“Destroyed nose, unrepairable skin,” mouths a grimacing DeBruin, lunging over the pulpit. Blood splatters on pages of a holy book: “I am dog now. No cage, nowhere to go at all. I am dog now.”


Tackett’s favorite part of the video? When a Bible gets launched out of an open window.

Films that Mecca says influenced his vision for “Dog” include Sami Rami’s Evil Dead, Leif Jonker’s Darkness, Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, Glen Coburn’s Bloodsuckers from Outer Space and Todd Jason Cook’s Death Metal Zombies.

“All of them have this no-budget charm, that despite the financial constraints you can see the talent and passion poured into them,” Mecca later noted via email. “All of these showed me that you can do a lot with a little.”

Dallas Horror

The grainy warmth of analog is ever-present in Mecca’s catalog. He’ll use camcorders in his work, including “I Am Dog Now,” and says he’ll always pick one up when he sees it at a flea market, yard sale or thrift store.

It’s a style that pairs well with Chat Pile. Tackett says the band digs trashy B-horror flicks.

“In fact, the way the band started is, like we were all just hanging out every week having a bad movie night,” he says. “We would watch these terrible, shot-on-VHS horror movies and stuff like that, and Will totally gets that world so perfectly. He understands it back and forth.”

Apart from that, Tackett says: “We just love the guy. He's super easy to work with.” When Mecca turned in “I Am Dog Now,” the band had no notes.

Aesthetics aside, Chat Pile strives to highlight what’s happening along the I-35 corridor — including, in this case, Mecca’s work. Great things in this landlocked region often get overlooked.

Tackett has some … opinions about Dallas that many Denton residents, at least, would agree with. Big D, he says, “might be one of the most horrific places on planet Earth.”

Why?

Dallas is one of the largest cities in the U.S. but doesn’t have the culture or identity to match, Tackett argues. Nothin’ but strip malls as far as the eye can see, plus loads of aggro-drunk driving. Denton, meanwhile, acts as a sort of antidote, he says.

“It has that really cute town square with all the cool shops and everything,” Tackett adds. “Recycled Books is maybe the best used bookstore in all of America. And then to top it off, you have all these cool, arty weirdos who kind of cultivated a scene out there.”

Texas and Oklahoma might not immediately come to mind when one thinks of a thriving underground scene, Tackett says. Yet it’s existed here for decades, largely thanks to folks like Mecca.

Whenever a band asks to work with Mecca again, he’s always flattered.

“It's fun to do this,” he says. “If you told teenage me that I'd be getting to do this, he'd be stoked.”

Chat Pile’s Cool World drops Oct. 11 via The Flenser. The band embarks on a North American tour the following month.