Hinterland had its most diverse lineup ever this year, from Tyler, the Creator’s headlining rap set to Glass Beams’ Indian-influenced neo-psychedelia. The festival began Friday with an unprecedented hardcore punk show from California four-piece Scowl, who, for the first time in festival history, encouraged the crowd to open up a moshpit.
Scowl is fronted by Kat Moss, a neon green-haired dynamo who never sang in public before starting the band in 2019. Bassist Bailey Lupo and drummer Cole Gilbert have been with the project since its inception as well, while guitarist Mike Bifolco (of Philadelphia bands Chemical Fix and Fixation) joined in 2023. Scowl’s debut full-length album, How Flowers Grow, came out in 2021, and they just released their sophomore record, Are We All Angels, in April.
Scowl is hardcore to its core, complete with Moss’s heartfelt guttural screams. But their new album finds the band foraying into melodic pop-punk, as they continue to define their musical identity. This was a risk for Scowl, as many hardcore community members are purists. However, Moss and her bandmates weren’t striving to reinvent their sound on Are We All Angels. They simply wrote new music to reflect the band’s natural evolution.
“I think [the melodic sound] was just this natural progression for all of us with this band,” Moss said. “There was never an intention to be anything specific besides a fun hardcore band, and we wanted to write a record that showcased more of our abilities.”
Multiple songs on the new album, like “Fantasy” and “B.A.B.E.”, express frustrations with feelings of alienation and gatekeeping within the hardcore community. The punk scene has a history of mistreating female-fronted acts, but Moss believes that sexism is not reflective of the true spirit of this kind of music.
“I think we need to stop treating [female-fronted punk bands] like a novelty. I think that at the end of the day, hardcore is for everyone — literally everyone. If you enter that space, that DIY show, that room, and you feel a part of it, you're welcome there,” Moss said. “I think that women and queer people and pretty much like non- white cis men [...] are just as welcome, and I think that that's part of the root of the issue. [...] More than anything, when I first started coming to shows, I just wanted to feel like everybody else, and I wanted to feel welcome in that space, and 90% of the time, I did, and I do.”
Despite achieving a notable level of success, including touring with legendary acts like System of a Down and Deftones, the members of Scowl still embrace the DIY concert environment that remains the backbone of the hardcore scene. They’ve played at a VFW hall, under an overpass and even from a fast-food parking lot.
“We played a Sonic in New Jersey, and that was crazy,” Bifolco said. “People were just lighting off fireworks. We were literally just in a Sonic drive-through, and it was nuts.”
Embodying the spirit of DIY hardcore can be challenging on stages as big as Hinterland. Moss is intentional about translating the punk energy of intimate concert experiences to larger crowds.
"I think that crowd interaction, crowd participation, is at the core of hardcore and punk music," Moss said. "So even though there might be a barricade, even though you might be on a stage that's eight feet tall, I try really hard to just make sure everyone still feels very close. Lots of eye contact, and just telling people what to do and screaming in their faces. It's really fun."
Scowl’s band members list a slew of artists as influences, from Ceremony and Gorilla Biscuits to Billie Eilish and Fall Out Boy. Moss recognizes that, as a highly visible frontwoman, she too can be an inspiration for women in punk and hardcore.
“It's not a career, it's a lifestyle,” Moss said. “My bit of advice to anybody trying to start a band is just like, it doesn't have to be good. Just do it. You just gotta write that demo, and it can be garbage and it can sound really crappy, but there's a lot of people who will connect with it because they don't care about all the technicalities. They're just in that room with you and feeling that raw energy, and that goes above everything else.”
That raw punk energy was certainly present in the first-ever Hinterland moshpit. Despite some haters on the internet saying otherwise, Scowl continues to be sufficiently hardcore.
