Culture
Scowl’s Kat Moss talks about pushing their vocals to a new level on ‘Are We All Angels?’
By: Nicholas Kobe
Posted on:
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – California hardcore band Scowl has burst onto the scene as one of the genre’s standout acts of the past five years. Formed in 2019, the band released a series of harsh, visceral singles that led to their 2021 debut, How Flowers Grow, which propelled them to become one of the few hardcore bands to play Coachella 2023.
This year, their second album, Are We All Angels?, showcases a more melodic and emotional direction while maintaining their gritty roots.
WOUB’s Nicholas Kobe spoke with Scowl vocalist Kat Moss about the band’s evolution and overall trajectory ahead of their fall U.S. tour with Sunami. Find a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Nicholas Kobe: How would you describe Scowl in a sentence?
Kat Moss: Scowl is just a group of people who are trying to have a lot of fun and find connections in every room we play.
Do you feel that connection is something that you were able to achieve on the new record?
Moss: Absolutely. It’s been really gratifying playing these new songs to different audiences and seeinghow people have connected with them. It’s tough when you’re making a piece of art, and you’re so focused on honoring the emotions and getting your message across. But once it’s out there, you don’t have control over it, so it’s really great to hear the response. It’s always surprising when people tell me they connected with like a very personal song. It’s cool to stare a stranger in the face and feel like we shared an experience. Sometimes that’s really tough stuff, so it’s nice.
What makes hardcore music such a powerful outlet for heavy emotions?
Moss: It’s always been the music I’ve been drawn to growing up, before I ever had the idea of being in a band. It’s the music that I always thought explained how I felt the best, and it still does. The landscape of it is incredible in the current day.
What about the landscape is incredible today?
Moss: I think there are a lot of artists and bands creating music that is so dimensional. We’re in an era of rock and alternative music where a lot of it can’t be defined anymore. We’ve gone through so many genre eras where I don’t really feel like that’s a thing anymore. It’s actually really cool that there’s so much that crosses so many boundaries. You see it in tour bills and in legacy acts’ newer music. There’s so much stuff that’s spanning genres, and it’s exciting. It’s art, evolving as we live. I think that that’s such a beautiful thing to pay attention to in a time in history that’s really hard to look at.
What inspired Scowl’s move toward a more melodic sound on this record?
Moss: There are tons of reasons. We did a short melodic interlude on our first record. That was the first moment I had ever sung on a recording, and the first time the band really heard me sing. It was this kind of spark, this catalyst moment for us. I feel like melody and pop structure have always been a little bit present in our music. Of course, it’s hardcore, but I feel like the structuring didn’t have to be shifted as much as just my vocal performance. It was also just a challenge. Can I write a record where I’m singing on every track and being more intentional with my screams and wanting to convey more emotion with these songs? It was also being an artist and having an
artist’s brain, and wanting to try something new.
Technically, on a vocal level, what was your training process like to teach yourself?
Moss: I always sang growing up. I wasn’t a singer, but was just the kind of person who was always singing alone in my room and in the car. I did choir in high school. So I have some awareness of technique and what my vocal ability is. There are aspects to it that just kind of came naturally, but a lot of it was also just personal research. I listened to as many vocalists who I liked and felt inspired by, and people who I felt like fit my range. Listening to a song and going, “That’s a really crazy run, can I sing that?” Then going over and over and doing it. It was a lot of self-disciplined work where I was doing a lot of vocal stamina exercises and things like that.
Is there anywhere you want to take yourself vocally that you weren’t able to on this record?
Moss: I think personally, on the song Let You Down from our most recent record, I jumped into this song with a belt. The whole time I’m singing on this belt. I’m running a marathon, and I really like how it feels now singing it live. When we recorded, I was a little shaky and nervous about it. Now I’m really confident in that place, and I want to write more songs in that spot for my voice. Then there are aspects where I find some of my lower register and stuff like it’s very quiet and soft. I want to be very intentional about where I put that in future songs because I think that there’s a lot of emotion that I can convey through that voice.
Speaking of technical proficiency, I’ve read in other interviews that the band was not the most technically proficient when you started. How do you look back on that now?
Moss: It’s been really fun. I think there’s no other way for me to learn. I never played instruments, and I didn’t have the ability to take classes in music or anything. I’m still very interested in that education, but besides that, it’s been really cool to learn through experience. I think it’s common for bands and artists to learn the way that I have. Not a lot of us who are attracted to doing this, especially on the punk and hardcore side of things, are born with the privilege of being propped up that way to do it. You kind of have to just chase it. I take a lot of pride in that. I have also recognized how important it is to be humble and how important it is to constantly be humbled by the music and my bandmates about different things. We all learn from each other. It’s been really beautiful.
When you decided to go for the softer sounds on this record, was there any fear of alienating a fan base?
Moss: I think it exists; there’s an awareness of it for sure, but not so much a fear because I’ve watched this happen my entire life. I look at the history of music, especially in alternative music and punk music, and bands have always shifted and grown. We’re not the first band to do that, and we won’t be the last. A lot of it depends on the sincerity and the honesty behind these transitions. I genuinely believe if you have a fan base that loves you and connects with your words and music, they’re there.
There might be some people who don’t rock with it, and that’s okay. But ideally, we’re making a change that people connect with. They will grow with your own growth. At the end of the day, there’s so much music out there. I feel like I’ve listened to bands that changed their sound, and I loved it, and then there are bands I loved that changed their sound, and I didn’t rock with it, but there was always another thing there for me. I don’t put my whole life on a band. But at the same time, music and bands did save my life. So it’s kind of like it’s this tightrope. So, there was awareness of that, but that wasn’t gonna stop any of us.