A blur of green hair, guttural screams and stage diving, a dislocated knee and a set that ended almost as soon as it started. While most students were hunkered down the Monday night of finals, I found myself among a select few who took a break from dead week to see the unique and electrifying performance of hardcore punk band Scowl.
With the increase in live shows following the tail end of the pandemic, Scowl has been one of the fastest-rising names in hardcore. The group has been touring nonstop since the release of their 2021 debut album, “How Flowers Grow.” As their sophomore album, “Are We All Angels,” dropped April 4th via Dead Oceans, Scowl has found themselves spearheading a movement set to bring hardcore punk to a wider audience.
I was particularly excited that Scowl chose San Luis Obispo as one of their tour stops, even if it meant procrastinating on studying. Scowl was one of the first modern hardcore bands I became a fan of, their bright and flowery branding acting as a gem amidst the standard, routine male-fronted bands that were praised online. After turning 17, I was treated to seeing Scowl at the 2022 LA hardcore music festival, “Sound and Fury.” Sporting a flowered minidress, thigh-high white boots and orange-tinted sunglasses, vocalist Kat Moss took the stage with the line, “We are motherfucking Scowl. From fucking California. Move the fuck up.”
That same energy was replicated at the Libertine on Dec.9. With audience members grabbing Moss’s microphone to scream lyrics aloud and stage divers front-flipping from the short Libertine stage into the sides of the packed house, I found myself dodging spin-kickers and caught in the collective surge from the crowd.
Scowl’s crowd-riling energy comes mainly from what’s integral to live music — crowd participation. “We like when people are dancing and having fun,” guitarist Malachi Greene said.
The release of Scowl’s single “Special” showcases their musical evolution, transcending beyond what’s expected within the genre. Being the first single off of “We Are All Angels,” Special includes indie, alternative and grunge elements, evocative of the legendary Bikini Kill or Veruca Salt.
“We are five very different people. Something about the five of us just clicks, and we’re just gonna keep making music that we want to hear. Whether that be a 30-second song with a D-beat or a three-minute song with a chorus,” drummer Cole Gilbert said.
From performing at Coachella to opening for Limp Bizkit, Scowl’s rapid rise to prominence hasn’t come with a lack of hard work from the band members. Touring for over three years straight does “take a toll, because you start to lose sense of what is normal,” Moss shared.
This isn’t to say Scowl is ungrateful for these experiences — in fact it has been a catalyst to meet other like-minded individuals. Movements, Citizen, Destroy Boys, Zulu, Drain, Speed, Drug Church and Sunami are just some of the big names in the modern hardcore movement Scowl has been lucky to tour and become friends with.
The community from Santa Cruz and the larger Bay Area is also important in Scowl’s history.
“Every band from Santa Cruz has become a big family. So many of the bands are very different-sounding, but everyone rides for each other, and has come up together,” Greene said reminiscing on how he’s known Marco (Drummer from Slugger, CA on tour with Scowl) since he was a 10-year-old kid at the skatepark.
Although many of Scowl’s melodic elements have evolved over time, the lyrical motifs have stayed much the same. In the track “Retail Hell” off of their 2019 EP “Reality After Reality…” Moss questions, “What’s the point of persistence …When my point of existence, measured only in green.”
Although Moss had brown hair at the time and was writing about money in the lyric, she recognizes that now it also pertains to her green hair, asking, “Who really are you?”
“I wanted to go on stage feeling like I get to share a part of my very true self without having to say much. So the hair gets to communicate that in a lot of ways. Something I didn’t expect is the hair would sometimes feel a bit caging. I’ve had to find ways to play with it and still feel like I’m in control, while still holding onto this iconic thing,” Moss said.
The set ended abruptly; as the crowd yelled for an encore, Moss and the rest of the band made sure to help a dislocated knee find help.
As a woman and musician who has taken part in punk bands since age 15, Scowl has been particularly inspiring to me, illustrating that to thrive is to be unapologetically yourself. Moss remarks that it’s an honor to be considered a figurehead in this space, assisting in the destruction of barriers for women and marginalized groups in alternative scenes.
Watch the full interview and show recap above.
Scowl is Kat Moss (Vocals), Malachi Greene (Guitar), Mikey Bifolco (Guitar), Bailey Lupo (Bass), and Cole Gilbert (Drums).
