Are Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile the most exciting act in heavy music just now? Their music is deep, dark, and thunderous, flirting with elements of sludge metal, noise rock, hardcore punk, and lots more. Their lyrics form a tapestry of stories from the dying days of the US state: of drug abuse, homelessness, street violence and toxic masculinity. It’s not hammy or exploitative because of the soupcon of irony in the hollered delivery of singer Raygun Busch. At Queen Margaret Union, Chat Pile are magnificent while barely trying. 

But first up it’s The HIRS Collective, a ‘queercore’ two-piece from Philadelphia who perform hyper-energetic metal-tinged punk in quick blasts. Explicitly anti-fascist in ethos, singer and drum-machine wrangler Jenna Pup begins with shout-outs for the trans community and a call of ‘Free Palestine’. It goes down extremely well. Chat Pile’s politics aren’t on the surface in the same way but you can judge them by the company they keep; and by the lyrics to songs such as ‘Why’ and ‘Slaughterhouse’, which deal, respectively, with the blight of homelessness in the USA and the cruelty of factory farming.

Busch has a natural, surly charisma and doesn’t need to do much to rouse the crowd. The band spend the first few songs lumbering into gear but by the time anti-misogynist romp ‘Masc’ from new LP Cool World gets going, the front rows are in a frenzy. In between songs the singer expounds on his encyclopaedic knowledge of films set in Glasgow: he likes us after all! The encore track, gun-violence themed ‘Anywhere’, degenerates into discordant squall and we all return home tired but happy.

Chat Pile/The HIRS Collective reviewed at Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow; picture by Juliette Boulay.