I'm basically the opposite. I cannot stand email for day-to-day work discussion, because there is effectively no way to distinguish messages by priority or time-sensitivity. Email sits in the horrible middle road between synchronous (like a phone call) or asynchronous (like a physical mailed letter). I think email works well (and seems to be designed) for the latter use case, but at work there may be an expectation of prompt responses.

For me, Slack and similar work really well for small companies or teams (20 or less). I haven't experienced work chat in a larger company or team, so I could see it getting messy.

As for people getting mad at you for going offline to buckle down and get work done, that seems like a business culture issue that isn't going to be any better at the same company if they got rid of work chat.