Chat Pile @ QMU, Glasgow, 23 Apr

Having been noise rock’s breakout band of 2022 with their anguished, bludgeoning interrogation of the contemporary American nightmare on God’s Country, Chat Pile are a band in the ascendancy. Reaching into more emotionally nuanced waters than their debut (which mostly sat between AHHHHHH and ARRRRGHHH on the feelings scale), last year’s follow up Cool World also broadened their sonic palette further into nu-metal, post-punk and straight up metallic chaos. It’s off the back of this record that they land in Glasgow tonight; a band soaring and intent on proving it’s no fluke. 

The sheer thudding force of Chat Pile is what’s initially noticeable – when I say noticeable, I mean in the way a plane landing in your kitchen is noticeable. You don’t so much watch them perform tunes like I Am Dog Now or grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg, as let them kick seven shades out of you. It’s brutally powerful, but has a sneaky sense of rhythm, particularly on the spindly Funny Man. It largely stems from bass player Stin, the band’s muscular centre and source of much of their sly pop instincts. 

Amid all of this, singer Raygun Busch’s stage presence is always captivating. He paces in circles, shirtless and twitching, rarely looking at the audience during songs, seemingly trapped in the wasps' nest guitars emanating from stage right. It means that when he does face out for the fiery, righteous indignation of Why, it feels all the more pointed, turning a song that on paper could become four minutes of everyone tediously agreeing with each other into something bracing and confrontational.

The band’s non-belief in setlist gives a free-flowing feeling to the gig, but the time it takes for them to decide where to go next gives Busch ample opportunity to talk to the crowd about his chosen topic of conversation, namely all the shit films shot in Glasgow. It’s a seemingly infinite well to draw from, and one he does with the air of an avuncular uncle just excited to talk to you about what he’s interested in. It’s endlessly endearing. 

This mix of the personable and the pummelling is a line they walk perfectly throughout the show, and it all comes to a head with in the incendiary Dallas Beltway. It’s the song that remains maybe their finest hour, and the great indicator of their ability to satirise, humanise and render in total nightmarish honesty a form of masculinity moving far beyond crisis point. All of this is powered by a growling lumpen beast of a riff, staggering forward raging, drunken and wounded.

Chat Pile are stunning tonight, to the extent that you don’t realise until after the fact that they’ve played comparatively few of their crowd-pleasers, but it’s hard to notice, let alone care, when they’re on form like this.