Are We All Angels Cassette - Clear

Scowl is a band that sounds exactly like their name implies. Venomous, fierce, antagonistic. A sneer not to be crossed. Over the last five years, the Santa Cruz, California, band has firmly planted their flag in the hardcore scene with their vicious sound and ripping live show, sharing stages around the world with Circle Jerks, Touché Amoré, and Limp Bizkit, and filling slots at prominent festivals like Coachella, Sick New World, and Reading and Leeds.

But with their new album, Are We All Angels (Dead Oceans), Scowl is aiming to funnel all that aggression through a more expansive version of themselves.

Scowl formed in 2019, after vocalist Kat Moss, a Bay Area scene regular with no prior musical experience, connected with guitarist Malachi Greene and drummer Cole Gilbert at the legendary Berkeley venue 924 Gilman the previous year. They soon recruited bassist Bailey Lupo, and later completed their lineup with the addition of guitarist Michael Bifolco in 2022.

After self-releasing a pair of hard-hitting demos and playing local shows, Scowl became deeply immersed in the scene, coming up with a rising group of bands like Drain, Sunami, and Gulch.

Much of Are We All Angels grapples with Scowl’s newfound place in the hardcore scene, a community which has both embraced the band and made them something of a lightning rod over the past few years. Standout single “Not Hell, Not Heaven” outright rejects the narratives cast onto them by outsiders. “It’s about feeling victimized and being a victim, but not wanting to identify with being a victim,” explains Moss. “It’s trying to find grace in the fact that I have my power. I live in my reality.

You have to deal with whatever you're dealing with, and it ain’t working for me.” The band breaks from a sense of disassociation to seek deeper connections on “Fantasy.” “It’s incredibly challenging to try to balance my love for the scene while also feeling, in some spaces, extremely alienated and hated,” Moss says. “‘Fantasy’ is about feeling like I don't know how to connect with these people anymore, because I have shelled myself away so hard.”

Are We All Angels is an album marked by alienation, grief, and the loss of control. “Control is unfortunately part of the feminine experience in rock music and in a fairly male-dominated scene,” says Moss. “You have to be hot and sexy, but not too sexy because that’s slutty. You want to be strong and talented, but don’t show yourself off too much because that’s embarrassing and cringe. That side of control really balls you up and tosses you across the room constantly, and it pisses me off.”

The album ends in a philosophical place on the closing, titular track, “Are We All Angels,” asking questions like, “Is this all there is?” and ultimately putting it on the listener to decide. “It’s about the personal struggle between good and evil. It doesn’t matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ you are, there are systems that will try to rewrite your narrative no matter what you actually do,” explains Moss, noting that punctuation on “Are We All Angels” has been deliberately omitted in an attempt to leave the statement open-ended. “The reality is, you aren’t defined by your feelings. You are defined by what you do and how you treat people and connect with the world.”