Final fall, on the second-floor stage of a cramped tavern referred to as Neck of the Woods in San Francisco, Kat Moss was throwing elbows, shoving males twice her dimension right into a packed circle pit and screaming right into a microphone.
Moss, the frontwoman for the Bay Space hardcore band Scowl, held her personal. Within the tight-knit circle of Northern California punks, this sweating, pulsing, tattoo-covered cluster of our bodies have been her folks. Simply earlier than midnight, the group streamed out of the swampy bar into the chilly air, bruised and smiling. On this crowd, stage diving, moshing and the occasional foot to the face all come from a spot of affection.
However as Scowl’s star has risen from a gaggle of underdogs enjoying home reveals throughout the West Coast to a broader nationwide viewers, Moss and her 4 bandmates have been engaged in a distinct form of combat — one with the gatekeepers who consider the band isn’t hardcore sufficient.
The band was blasted on message boards and social media in 2023, accused of “promoting out” when it struck a model cope with a company sponsor. (Many hardcore contemporaries have performed comparable ones.) The group later took warmth for placing out what some noticed as pop sensibility masquerading as punk. Scenesters chafed when megastars like Publish Malone and Hayley Williams of Paramore stated they have been followers of the group. And a number of the most aggressive purists didn’t recognize Moss’s proclivity for posting magnificence tutorials on her private social media channels. (Her mop of neon lime hair is difficult to overlook in a crowd.)
Scowl isn’t shying away from the battle. As a substitute, its members need to push the bounds of their sound and what they really feel hardcore music may be. With Scowl’s second album, “Are We All Angels” out April 4, the group is shifting from the stalwart hardcore label Flatspot Data to Useless Oceans — dwelling to Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. It has enlisted Will Yip, a producer identified for broadening the sound of punk bands. And it has leaned extra right into a slower, heavier sound with grungy riffs and catchier choruses.
The result’s a file that represents its influences past strictly hardcore — from L7 and the Muffs to Veruca Salt and Rubbish — on an expansive, mature LP that embraces brighter hooks with out dropping the band’s early aggressive sound.
“We simply knew going into recording that we wished to do extra melodies and concord, to indicate off extra of our musicianship,” Moss, 27, stated on a sunny afternoon within the band’s hometown, Santa Cruz, final month, sitting on a stone picnic desk exterior the Capitola Public Library. “We wished these songs to be probably the most mature factor Scowl has performed. Extra emotional,” she defined. “I don’t need to simply write conventional punk songs. Can we dig a little bit deeper?”
That sentiment might sound like heresy to the hardcore loyalists of the deeply insular scene. However even hardcore is beginning to change. Teams like Turnstile bridged its early sound to a extra mainstream attraction. Model Pussy shifted towards shoegaze and spaciness in between the loud barks of its frontwoman, Marisa Dabice. And smaller teams like Angel Mud and Comfortable Play have added hooks, melody and even tenderness to their tracks.
The consequence has been a radical rethinking of what the style may be, and the way a wider swath of musicians and followers might start to embrace it.
“We’ve gotten a little bit bit older, a little bit extra mature, and we’re enjoying the music we need to play,” stated Cole Gilbert, Scowl’s 27-year-old drummer. “It will be actually boring to rerecord our first album and put it out once more.”
Scowl’s Northern California hardcore roots run deep. In 2016, Gilbert and the guitarist Malachi Greene, 30, stored operating into each other at rock reveals across the Bay Space and finally met Moss, who was bagging groceries in Sacramento. The trio recruited Bailey Lupo, a 31-year-old San Jose native they knew from the hardcore scene. Mikey Bifolco, who’s 32 and lives in Philadelphia, joined after his earlier band toured with Scowl and he started crashing within the group’s storage. They bonded over lots of the NorCal bands that influenced their enjoying types: Operation Ivy, Rancid, Ceremony, Trash Speak.
After gaining native traction with its first self-titled EP and a follow-up, Scowl put out its 2021 full-length album, “How Flowers Develop,” proper when California hardcore was having a breakout second. Younger folks have been turning out to reveals in droves after pandemic lockdowns lifted, looking forward to the vitality of dwell crowds. Santa Cruz hardcore friends like Drain and Gulch began reserving greater excursions. And down south in Los Angeles, upstarts like Militarie Gun and Zulu have been seeing new followers flood in.
Two years later, Scowl began to experiment with songwriting that went past the growls and rapid-fire riffs of its first releases. The group linked up with Yip, a Philadelphia-based producer identified for his work with Turnstile, Title Battle and different bands which have shifted from strictly hardcore songs to a broader viewers.
With “Psychic Dance Routine” in 2023, Moss embraced extra of her melodic aspect. The only was a tough left flip from the group’s ordinary punishing tempos, with a slower, shoegaze vibe and a catchy refrain replete with Moss’s dreamy vocals. It was a danger, however one the band was prepared to take.
“They have been simply so open to creating good songs, and never simply spinning their wheels and worrying about whether or not they have been hardcore or punk sufficient,” Yip stated in a telephone interview from his studio. “The second Kat began to sing melodies, I checked out her and stated ‘you’re a star.’”
Moss is a frontwoman of contrasts. Rising up in small cities west of Sacramento, her introduction to music was largely by the Beatles earlier than she found metallic and pop-punk in her teenagers. She generally will get anxious earlier than going onstage, however thrives on the vitality and chaos of dwell units. And she or he has stated she embraces her sense of femininity alongside together with her punk roots, mixing the colourful aesthetic of inspirations like Billie Eilish with the riot grrrl vibes of Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna.
Over the past two years, greater and higher alternatives began appearing, and the band racked up miles in vans and airplanes bouncing between rock golf equipment and pageant gigs. Followers began showing from past the preliminary hardcore group that embraced Scowl.
And that was the second that the hardcore scene turned on them.
After Scowl performed a Taco Bell-sponsored halftime present through the girls’s World Cup in fall 2023, hard-liners lit up hardcore message boards and social media, calling the band “sellouts” and giving Scowl the dreaded label of “business plant.” Moss acquired the worst of it. On-line trolls picked aside her look and stage presence, and chalked up Scowl’s fast ascent to enterprise executives who wished a fairly face on album covers.
“If you happen to’re a lady in a band who finds any form of success on this scene, folks usually instantly assume you had it straightforward since you had a lady out entrance,” stated Blair Tramel, the frontwoman for the punk group Snooper, in an interview. “Typically they lash out.”
Moss discovered the flood of criticism isolating at occasions, particularly whereas the group was on tour and away from its largely supportive Bay Space group. The stress compounded the strained private relationships and breakups they have been enduring because the band’s following grew.
“It’s laborious to not really feel alienated on this transition we’re going by,” Moss stated. “Being a lightning rod can damage. However that damage can be one thing that places life and vitality again into this band.”
As a substitute of retreating, Scowl took all of the grief it saved up over a rocky 2024 and introduced it into the recording studio. “Are We All Angels” grapples with the band’s difficult emotions concerning the hardcore group, Moss’s struggles being a lady in a male-dominated business, the group’s private battles with psychological well being and the dizzying sense of loneliness that may include success.
On tracks like “B.A.B.E.,” Moss is extra express concerning the tumult of the previous few years. “Everybody right here might you please simply shut up? I gotta catch my breath,” she sings in a poppy refrain, in between thick, staccato bursts of guitar. On “Not Hell, Not Heaven,” which has a number of the catchiest hooks on the album, the group reckons with being victimized whereas nonetheless rejecting the concept of being a sufferer. Moss is adamant that regardless of the hardships of the previous few years, the file isn’t just about taking grief from friends.
Earlier this month, Scowl took the stage on the grand Brooklyn Paramount, enjoying a short, 30-minute opening set to a extra sedate viewers in comparison with the San Francisco golf equipment its members are accustomed to. The phases have been getting greater, their crowds extra diverse.
After their set, the five-piece sat on the cement ground of a cramped dressing room beneath the venue, their gear and garments stacked in circumstances that crammed half of the area. Chatting amongst themselves, they mirrored on the vitality of their crowds being hit and miss on tour, and that night’s group was extra muted than they hoped.
“No, wait, what about that one dude,” Lupo, the bassist, stated, noting the lone crowd surfer who floated towards the stage through the finish of their set.
Moss perked up in settlement. “Completely, thank God for that man,” she stated. “He was feeling it.”
