Since 2021 debut How Flowers Grow, Scowl have become one of the best, coolest hardcore bands in the world. But away from huge victories like performing at Coachella and releasing 2023’s next-level Psychic Dance Routine EP, vocalist Kat Moss found herself struggling, suffering and very nearly giving up. Now, as they return with second album Are We All Angels, the singer is hell-bent on survival…
There’s an oddly addictive thrill in being knowingly self-destructive. Something about punishing yourself, telling yourself you’re not good enough, or engaging in unhealthy habits spikes your dopamine in ways that keep you coming back for more. Sure, there’s always the option to do the work, to change your inner monologue, or treat yourself with the kindness you deserve and would afford anybody else – but the toxic procrastination somehow feels better.
Kat Moss knows this all too well. The Scowl vocalist is, by her own admission, a masochist. But around 2023, they weren’t just deriving a perverse pleasure from pain, but got so used to the emotional turmoil in her own head that she was starting to find it comforting. It was familiar – and, crucially, in Kat’s control.
While this was happening, life seemed to be treating Scowl kindly. Opportunities were rolling in, the hype machine was fully operational, and the band’s bucket list was rapidly shrinking – after their stunning performance at Coachella went viral, the doesn’t-quite-scan term ‘Scowlchella’ was thrown around the internet. This period should have been joyful. Sometimes it was. But in the run-up to the writing of Scowl’s second album Are We All Angels, Kat – whose pronouns are she/they – wasn’t especially present to absorb it all.
“There were times when it came to touring and playing music that I did see it as a tool to destroy myself,” they begin. “I found a lot of weird comfort in the control of that, because if I didn’t use it that way, then I was kind of spinning out of control. It created this really unhealthy thing for me where I checked out a lot of my body, and I checked out a lot of the experiences I was having. While they were incredible and beautiful, there’s some deep sadness looking back and recognising that I was not in the moment, and I was watching myself experience it.”
Kat’s not alone in that experience. Within the heavy music community, they’ve seen that same masochism propel plenty of their peers into a vortex of tangled comfort and chaos. Music, and the music industry by association, is a source of constant stimulation – from the fizzing energy of a live show to plugging into an eardrum rattling playlist – and it’s often difficult to step off the treadmill. Still, the singer reckons there’s a silver lining somewhere.
“There’s a reason that we’re all attracted to [heavy music] and exist in it, and find ourselves relating to it so hard,” they observe. “We’re creatures who are really, really comfortable in chaos and seek conflict subconsciously, because that’s what we know. Most people I know through punk and hardcore come from some sort of damaged background or trauma. It is this beautiful thing that we all share.
“It’s important to understand that you don’t get to choose what happens to you – you don’t get to choose trauma, and you don’t get to just wipe it clean. It exists. It’s yours, whether you like it or not. But the cool thing about art and music and subculture is that there is this really beautiful way of taking that and painting with it, and then you make this cool thing that everybody relates to in their own fucked-up way. It’s really exciting and thrilling, and it makes me want to stay alive for the experience.”
That’s exactly what Kat did with Are We All Angels. It was her space to unpack it all, find catharsis, and choose creation over destruction. It captures the dark side of living the dream, where exhilaration and triumph coalesces with burnout, pressure, politicking and mental strain.
Certain concepts Kat discusses today in her Californian bedroom are echoed almost verbatim across this new collection of songs – some of which are arguably their best to date. From B.A.B.E’s ‘Don’t know any other way / Comfort in the suffering,’ refrain to Special’s ‘Bring me back to my body,’ they are desperately trying to unspool the knot they tied themselves into.
Despite this pervasive search for peace, however, some of the rougher edges to band life will never go away. There’ll still be pressure, worries about money and the risk of burnout. A lot of it Kat is still figuring out, but is gradually finding a place of positivity. She’s more conscious of her health and happiness, and focussing on what’s beneficial in the long run.
“I’m trying to work really hard at not finding so much comfort in the chaos and in controlling my suffering,” they say. “I’m kind of rewriting my narrative, [telling myself], ‘I deserve to be comfortable. I deserve to be happy,’ vs. this deep self-loathing, thinking, ‘I deserve this pain.’”
Ultimately, Kat knew it was necessary for her to be able to keep doing what she loves. “I’m not going to be able to keep doing this forever if I don’t live in a healthy way.”
Kat has an instinctive, physical reaction to the notion of being in the public eye, putting their hands in front of their face when the question comes up. The concept of how one is perceived by other people sets her teeth on edge, and she doesn’t hide it. They’ve written about it before, particularly on 2023 EP Psychic Dance Routine, but they’ve still not quite gotten accustomed to the attention.
Sometimes, Kat doesn’t want to be seen, or to even take up space at all. Sometimes she wants to run away and be a hermit somewhere remote and inaccessible. They would never go ahead and indulge those impulses, but they often wrestle with them. This is what Are We All Angels track Special deals with.
“I’m communicating with a part of myself [in that song] that isn’t based in reality,” Kat explains. “There’s a small child in me that’s like, ‘No, I don’t want it anymore, I want to take this thing that is Scowl and break it on the ground.’ It’s an irrational point of view, from a deep, insecure, sad part of myself. But I’m also recognising that that isn’t feasible, that there isn’t a choice at this point.”
But how does being seen and judged actually feel?
“I feel on fire a lot, honestly,” Kat admits. “It feels very raw and terrifying, and sometimes I am literally out of my body.”
She does, however, have a way to cope.
“There’s this thing that happens for me, and I think probably a lot of people can relate to this, where I just lock the fuck in. I found a lot of comfort in drag, and how drag is like this character. I started to be very inspired by how Chappell Roan talks about her character and her drag. I found a lot of comfort in recognising that Kat Moss is a little bit of drag sometimes.
“It makes the anxiety and the sweaty palms and the discomfort of it all a lot easier, because I’m stepping into this form, and I don’t have to feel like I’m going to bed with that form, and all of the ideas and perceptions and opinions attached to it. They have nothing to do with who I am internally. Deconstructing that as a whole has helped so much.”
“I feel on fire a lot, honestly. It feels very raw and terrifying, and sometimes I am literally out of my body”
On the other side of this coin, Kat’s still trying to stomach being perceived as a commodity. They came to this life with pure intentions – to make music and to play shows – not to become a product that they have to market.
“I never wanted to be a content creator,” she says. “I didn’t want that job, but that is a part of this job, unfortunately, with the state of how the music industry works. And that’s hard. But I’m still doing something I want to do so much. This is what my dreams are made of, but my dreams are made of also having to post on TikTok…”
Making reference to “the capitalism of it all”, what was once a means of expression, making art is not intrinsically tied to paying bills, health insurance and putting food on the table. Unsurprisingly, it’s a bit of a headache.
“Art for me is really important and I want that to take precedence, but to a degree, obviously, within reason,” Kat continues. “But I also need to be alive and functioning. It can be exhausting to exist in that space at times, and reckoning with it feels impossible.”
On their new album Scowl tackle the scourge of our consumerist society on Cellophane, as well as the closing title-track.
“We’re subjected to it and victimised by it by design,” the vocalist says. “I was struggling so much with being perceived and consumed and being this item for entertainment at times. I don’t like being possessed. I don’t like being owned.”
At the same time, their lens is wider. When capitalism intersects with white supremacy and the patriarchy, you cannot look one system in the eye without looking at them all.
“It sucks to be a victim of these systems of abuse. It sucks to be a woman in America. I can only imagine how scary and painful it is to be a black woman in America, or a trans woman. Those things are so pertinent and fucking intense and terrifying and real. To a degree, I have to accept that I don’t have control over the narrative that is being fed about me, or these systems. I kind of have to fly through it a little bit.”
She might not have control over how these systems of abuse might oppress her or others, but it doesn’t mean those systems can’t be dismantled. Kat’s not about to take it lying down either.
“We need to be diligent about questioning these things and not being fucking sleeper cells about it,” they say. “But on a greater scale, we need to look around us and question these systems and recognise how we’re being abused and how our narrative is being mutilated, and succumb a little bit to the grief and the feeling of it all. Let that exist and honour that, but also go fucking fight.
“On the personal side of the story of the record, that’s what I was going through – I was oscillating between my survival and my destruction. It did boil down to this point where I was like, ‘Well, if I fucking kill myself, I have so much more to say. I can’t burn out yet.’”
Are Scowl still a hardcore band? You bet. Their sound might have evolved from their spikier 2021 debut How Flowers Grow, and they’re labelmates with Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski now on Dead Oceans, but they’ve not kicked up their roots. Then again, while they want to stay connected to that world, they’re not stopping every five seconds to ask, ‘Is this hardcore enough?’
“It’s so important for me, personally and for this band, to practise this radical expression, whether that’s writing breakdowns and two-step parts, or writing choruses and poppy bubblegum hooks,” explains Kat. “We’re going to do it, whether people like it or not, because it’s personal. I love hardcore, but it’s not my prerogative, and I’m okay with that. I think that, in and of itself, is very hardcore, on the ethos side of things.”
The joy of hardcore is pulsing through their music all the time. Even if they attempt something that doesn’t naturally lend itself to moshing and mic grabs, Scowl’s ethics are forever indebted to the genre that raised them. They’re still the band who last summer joined the boycott against Barclays’ partnership with Download by playing a benefit show for Medical Aid For Palestinians in Birmingham instead.
“We want to consistently embody a hardcore mindset, to whatever degree is possible,” Kat stresses. “But also, I love music as a whole. It’s not just about punk and hardcore for me. Music and art are so vital to my existence, so why wouldn’t I honour that?”
That logic extends to Scowl’s new label home of Dead Oceans.
“It is the coolest opportunity to me, because I’m such a big fan of every one of their artists, They’ve done nothing but champion artists, and they’re just music fans as a whole. Everybody who I’ve met, who’s worked for the label, they all go to shows almost every day. That’s so cool to me.”
A natural continuation of Psychic Dance Routine, Scowl’s sound this time round can be sweet, sharp and bitter, sometimes all at once. Kat’s barbed scream still creeps through, but this new LP is nonetheless the most melodic they’ve ever been – and it’s catchy as hell, too. This is bolstered by the fact that Kat sings much more often than screaming, meaning the emotion and potency of her words is thrown out there with little to hide behind.
It’s taken work to get to the skill they want to be at. “It’s so exposing. When you’re singing clean live and you fuck up, it’s a lot more obvious. I’m like, ‘I gotta work on my shit.’ A lot of it has just been about confidence. Writing those vocal parts required a certain level of confidence that did not exist within me prior.”
“I love hardcore, but it’s not my prerogative, and I’m okay with that”
In a way, it’s the final frontier in Kat’s own personal battle to be okay with getting vulnerable. Singing clean leaves it all out there – “Everybody can hear what you’re saying more clearly” – and take that to its logical extreme on the closing title-track, where the music drops away from under Kat as they sing the final lines of the entire album completely a cappella.
“I wanted to have that moment with the music, because I felt like it was like mine for the taking, I rely on the band so much – I wouldn’t want to do Scowl without those guys,” Kat says. “But I was like, ‘I’m going to take this moment and challenge myself to write that.’ It just felt like an intuitive, right decision.”
Kat’s been so preoccupied with unloading their emotions on record that they haven’t thought too much about how others might receive it. But when asked about the impact they want to have, she immediately thinks about those listening who may identify with the way she’s felt.
“I hope I can plant a seed in other people, but especially young people who I see myself in, when I look down at the crowd, and I’m like, ‘I was you once.’ I really hope that this record does leave that impression with some people where it’s like, ‘Kat and I aren't that different.’ We’re going through the same stuff, maybe in different fonts. But I also want to empower people [to believe] you’re capable, and you’re beautiful and you’re talented in your own regard, and you have a very valuable life. Please don’t check out. The record is a lot about myself checking out and struggling with that, and I want to leave that ending message.
“Don’t run away.”
Scowl’s second album Are We All Angels is released on April 4. The band play Slam Dunk Festival on May 25 and 26 – get your tickets now.
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