Fast-food joints, parking lots, house shows, backyards, the grimiest DIY venues you can imagine—you name it, Scowl have played there. The Santa Cruz hardcore-but-so-much-more band toured hard immediately after forming in 2019 and then the following year took a break for obvious reasons. Determined to make up for lost time, they hit every venue or reappropriated public space that would have them as soon as they possibly could.

But even for a band that has a zeal for unusual spaces, frontwoman Kat Moss is still surprised that Scowl’s first-ever show in New York City was at an obscure dive bar called Madison Square Garden. Opening for Limp Bizkit, no less, as the everdisreputable rap-rock group chose the year 2022 to begin an arena comeback tour, as if modern life wasn’t strange enough already.

“It was crazy. It was such a trip. I think that was just the most spoiled that we’ve ever been treated on a tour. We had never been on a tour with catering,” Moss told me via phone the first time we ever talked. “We were eating lunch and my stomach did a flip and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re at MSG right now. Okay, here we go.’ And then right before we went on stage I was like, ‘God, this is so scary. What the hell am I doing?’

“We didn’t get much of a sound check at that show because New York has a lot of laws with union stuff. We went on stage, I didn’t really have monitors. It was pretty chaotic, but it was very fun. It was really cool. ”

For the record, Moss insists that Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit frontman and a formerly ubiquitous cultural villain, is a good hang. “He’s a really cool dude. One of the first things he told us was that his favorite band’s Minor Threat. He’s very, very with it.”

The first time I ever meet Moss in person, Scowl are loading in at the Brooklyn venue St. Vitus, which is about the size of one of Madison Square Garden’s bathrooms but also a famous spot all discerning punk and metal bands seek to play. They are the headliners on a zeitgeist-defining bill that also includes Militarie Gun and MSPAINT, their contemporaries in alternative-rock-influenced hardcore. I introduce myself as the guy who once talked to her for a more general piece about the current scene and who will now be talking to her for a CREEM profile on Scowl. “Oh, lit,” she replies, a black hoodie covering her green hair, dyed to a hue reminiscent of the Ghostbusters spook Slimer.

Interviewing bands at St. Vitus is always a bit of a pain, as the venue keeps it so real there’s not much of a greenroom or quiet place to talk. I once straight up just sat down on the sidewalk while interviewing someone there, but I’m too much of a gentleman to ask a lady to do such a thing. So instead Moss and the rest of the band—guitarists Malachi Greene and Mikey Bifolco, bassist Bailey Lupo, and drummer Cole Gilbert—wander around until we find a hotel lounge a few minutes away.

It looks like there’s a wedding reception, heavy on the Guns N’ Roses, going on in the lobby. We did get some strange looks, but the venue is not technically closed to the public and I have to get this interview done before their sound check begins, so we’re going to go with it. We joke for a second that Scowl should just take over as the wedding band, but I doubt anyone here would appreciate just what a coup it would be to get America’s hottest young band to play their nuptials.

We all settle in and chat a bit about last night’s show. It’s the end of September, and New York had its wettest month in more than a century, and the day before our interview Scowl played in the middle of Tropical Storm Ophelia, which brought flooding around the city. Scowl worried no one would come out, but that fear proved unfounded. The gig was full. People had to be there.

The bizarre MSG gig was just the flare signal for a wild run for Scowl, who have been touring nonstop and racking up critical acclaim for their 2023 EP Psychic Dance Routine. Along the way, they’ve earned cosigns from Hayley Williams and Post Malone and somehow become the only band to play both Coachella and the nii-metal revival festival Sick New World. (Great, albeit different, vibes at both, apparently.)

“I think that there’s been a lot of natural steps that have happened. And then there’s been a couple sprinkled in there that have been just absolutely stupid,” says Moss. “It totally felt like the biggest year for us so far. Every year has felt like the biggest year for us so far. And there is a level of pressure now applied that we didn’t previously have.

“It’s been really fun, though. It’s been good pressure. There’s been moments where we’ve all had the opportunity to crack, but we were really good at relying on each other as a band and as a unit and soldiering on. It’s made us a really strong band, and it’s made us a strong group of friends.”

Moss grew up in a small suburb outside of Sacramento before moving to Santa Cruz. A Tumblr and Warped Tour kid, she always longed to be around music and art. All her friends were in bands, she remembers, and she was taking pictures of them and contemplating starting a zine, but it took a while for to admit to herself, and to her boyfriend Greene, what she really wanted.

As soon as she jokingly-but-not-really suggested they start a band, Greene recruited friends from the local hardcore scene and immediately started booking gigs. “I was losing my mind. I was so nervous. I still get nervous. I handle it a lot better now,” Moss remembers. “I think the first six months of us playing shows, I would turn my back to the crowd and sing. I didn’t really know what I was doing up there. But I grew into it and found I’ve always loved doing it, even though it was scary. Like really scary, those first couple shows.”

Even as a child, Moss was afraid of attention, and would call in sick on school days when she was supposed to give a presentation. The internal conflict between wanting to be seen and not wanting to be seen is not something she has yet resolved. “But I also have realized that within myself, I do like that feeling and that rush of adrenaline.”

Greene, who is a bit more reserved in person than his more naturally ebullient partner, instinctively “knew she could be in a band.” After forming in 2019, “we kicked off immediately. I think our fourth or fifth show ever was our first day of tour,” says Lupo. “Our first year as a band, we put out two EPs and did three tours. We had people coming out for us. We were garnering respect and attention up until the pandemic.”

They toured every place they could in and around California and hoped to build on their self-titled EP and the Reality After Reality EP, which demonstrated from the jump that this was a band not intent on fucking around. (“Petty Selfish Cretin,” in particular, showed they could bring a lot of damage in just under a minute.) But, well, you know what happened in 2020.

Scowl made their grand return to the stage a year later at “a parking lot show that our friends put on. We all put it all together,” remembers Greene. “Over 2,000 people showed up. That was just a DIY show. No one knew how many people were coming up. We all realized at that moment, ‘Things have changed. There’s more people. There’s more people starting bands. There’s a whole group of young kids coming in. There’s a whole crop of new people, and they’re doing it their way.’”

And that new group of hardcore kids is much different than the previous generation. “I mean, the reality is hardcore...was kind of a boys’ club, but like no diss on that. That’s just the history in a lot of ways,” says Moss. “But there’s always been women involved. There’s always been queer people involved and BIPOC people. It’s not that that hasn’t happened. I think it’s just that over the years, the tides have shifted and people have become more accepting and are willing to talk about these things more. And it’s not an uncomfortable conversation. It's rather just facts, and I’m excited to watch it change and grow more.”

Growing up, Moss was a fan of MySpace-incubated pop-punk. “I loved it, but I didn’t feel it bared its teeth enough,” she says. “So when I found out about the Dead Kennedys, for example, I kind of started to read into what Jello Biafra was writing about and talking about. I was listening to a lot of the classic punk hardcore bands from the ’80s. And that’s when I was like, ‘Oh shit, this feels right.’”

She’s not the only person who came of age in the past few years who has been wrestling with the nagging feeling that society has profoundly failed her generation, which will have less housing and economic opportunities than those that came before her, but much more mass shootings, debt, and climatechange-induced catastrophes than ever before.

“America fucking sucks right now. The world fucking sucks. There’s a lot of things that really suck, and a lot of kids are opened up to that idea and radicalizing themselves,” she says with a shrug. “Punk is the soundtrack to all sorts of radicalization, and I’m excited to see that take life as things shift with our culture and subculture.”

The hardcore punk scene clearly changed during the pandemic, as did Scowl. Their 2021 debut album, How Flowers Grow, released through Flatspot Records, brought a refined savagery into the mix. One sign of creativity is seeing that ideas and forces that seem unrelated, if not oppositional, can in fact be smashed together, creating something new in the process. Moss, who calls herself “not picky,” claims equal allegiance to Gorilla Biscuits, Paramore, the Germs, My Chemical Romance, Sonic Youth, and Billie Eilish. She loves a primal beatdown and sticky hook in equal measure and does not care about outdated scene rules. She also surprised everyone in the band, including herself (her only previous experience with conventional singing was ninth-grade choir), by channeling one of her faves, Phoebe Bridgers, on the melodic standout “Seeds to Sow.” (“And I was like, oh, what the fuck?” says Greene.)

“I think it dawned on us all at the same time, like, ‘Oh, I have this ability,’” says Moss. “Not that I’m crushing and I’m fucking incredible or something.... It’s just more, ‘We can do something with this.’”

While the parking lot show was Scowl’s reintroduction to live music, it was a viral 2022 video of them playing at a New Jersey Sonic, uploaded onto the crucial punk YouTube channel hatebsix, that made them something approaching famous. Moss was wearing a stylish black dress and hair bow while screaming directly into appreciative audience members’ faces.

The show was put on by Bifolco, who later joined the band as second guitarist. “It’s been incredible,” he says. “And then in January, we were playing a show in Baltimore and I tore my ACL completely and was out for three months. But now I’m back.”

The video made Scowl figureheads of a new, more diverse (both in terms of influences and audience and band members) hardcore scene. And while Moss insists she’s not trying to provoke anyone by combining an unabashedly feminine presentation with a nearly feral performance style (“I just like that stuff, that’s just who I am”), it clearly rankles many hardcore purists, if Reddit and comment sections are to be believed.

Scowl also wasn’t necessarily setting out to troll those same purists by participating in Taco Bell’s Feed the Beat program, in which bands get free meal vouchers, as well as filming a video for the chain’s unofficial halftime show. Everyone’s gotta eat, after all, and in a streaming world that doesn’t even offer artists pennies on the dollar, any adult who has ever had to pay the rent might find it difficult to chide a band for taking a payday wherever they can find one.

“I mean, none of us come from money,’ says Greene. “Every single one of us has worked and been a part of our scene. We booked shows, we’ve worked those shows, we’ve helped backline shows. And we say yes to opportunities we get and we tour very hard, and that’s why we are where we are.

“We hear things all the time. They’ll be like, ‘That band is only there because the girl’s in the band. That band is only doing this because they’re an industry plant. That band is only there because they must have connections.’ We have none of those. We just are ourselves and we do what we do,” he continues. “I’m living rent-free in your head, dude. Eating fucking Taco Bell. I don’t give a shit. They can suck it.”

Whenever a certain type of person gets Mad Online, they often throw around incentives without understanding their meaning. But for the record, “industry plant” refers to an artist who has an affiliation with a major label, but who presents themselves, at least at the outset of their career, as an underground artist in order to cultivate cred. It’s mostly used as an epithet in the rap world, though the term does accurately describe the early days of such greats as Jane’s Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins, and Guns N’ Roses. It does not describe Scowl, who have released their albums through the small label Flatspot Records.

“I don’t understand what it is that makes us come off at all invalid. And I don’t think we are invalid at all. Not at all,” says Moss. “We’ve worked our asses off. We’ve slept on floors, we’ve gone hungry. We’ve all had negatives in our bank account multiple times this year. If that’s not punk enough, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really fucking matter to me.”

In response to the haters, Moss posted a note online that quoted Kathleen Hanna’s deathless lyric “your whole fucking culture alienates me.” I point out that Scowl received a thousand percent more online scorn than their friends and tourmates Militarie Gun, who also worked with Taco Bell but who also happen to be a bunch of dudes, and this is a sign that the haters are on some incel shit.

“I mean, duh, we know this,” responds Greene.

“It’s the patriarchy,” says Moss. “It exists everywhere.”

“How much would you say your writing is in direct reaction to the patriarchy or misogyny that you’ve dealt with as a woman?” I ask.

“Everything. Every bit of it. I mean, that’s not my goal with every song, but everything I fucking do is in spite of this fucking world, trying to bring me down as a human being and as an individual and trying to silence and quiet me,” she says, a hint of anger seeping into her voice.

“And I’m not the only one. In fact, I have a lot of privilege. I’m a fucking white woman. There’s a lot of things that I have easy compared to a lot of people who exist in this world, and it exists in our scene. But everything that I do is absolutely, at least some partial percentage, in spite of the fucking patriarchy and in spite of bigotry.”

When I ask how often do people actually say these things to the band in person instead of online, Greene shrugs. “I’ve had a couple people say weird shit, but it’s drunk people, they’re just being weirdos,” he says. “We’re not afraid to tell someone to fuck themselves. We all stick together. ”

On stage and off, Scowl are outspoken. Except for one topic in particular, where they notably (and understandably) clam up a little.

Glow On, Turnstile’s second album for the Warner Bros, imprint Roadrunner, made them one of the most popular rock-with-a-capital-R young bands of their generation, and Militarie Gun now work with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management and released their acclaimed album Life Under the Gun via the mega-indie Loma Vista, also home to St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney. Scowl have a loyal following, a magnetic frontperson and a proven ability to write a catchy rock banger that balances hooks and oomph. It’s not hard to wonder if they are the next band in the scene to step up to the big leagues.

And, uh, they’ll get back to us about that one.

“Keep an eye out,” says Greene. “That’s all we can say right now.”

Moss adds that “we’re definitely going to be writing a record when we get home,” she says. “And, um, there’s definitely steps that we’re taking to make sure that record reaches the ears we want it to reach.”

Weighing label offers, contract negotiations, and other business decisions, if (cough cough) that is what is currently happening, are delicate endeavors, of course, and if Scowl are not ready to speak up about their future business plans, then, fair enough. But they are more willing to talk about their future creative plans, as they’ve already begun crafting material for the next album.

“I don’t want to say much. I can speak on the feeling, though, and personally, I just want to be able to convey something with a level of maturity, both in the sound and in the lyrics,” says Moss. “I’m really excited to experiment more with my voice in so many different ways. I have so much inspiration, and there’s a lot of music I’ve been listening to in the last year and a half that has been really, really affecting me. I’ve opened myself up to a lot of different textures and things like that, listening to more noise music or ambient music and some avant-garde jazz.”

We'll have to see if Scowl become famous famous, but they’re already punk famous, and they’ve already earned several high-profile fans. “Hayley Williams having an awareness of us is a huge fucking deal already,” says Moss. But what other celebrity fans would they like to win over?

“It’s hard to say,” she replies. “From my personal stance, Lana Del Key or Bruce Springsteen.”

“Eric Andre would blow my mind,” says Greene.

“Adam Sandler in a Scowl shirt?” says Lupo. “Dude, I would shit a chicken.”

All that said, Greene, adopting a thoughtful tone, says, “The thing is, it’s amazing that these people like our band, but I’m just happy people listen. I’m very thankful for that,” he says. “Realistically, I’m just hoping more people check it out and resonate with it.

"It’s not about if a famous person likes us. It’s about if some 12-year-old kid finds it and wants to start playing music because they found it,” he says. “I really want it to reach the ears of people. Maybe it could change something. Maybe they hear it and they’re like, ‘I want to do this.’”