SCOWL
ARE WE ALL ANGELS (OLIVE GREEN VINYL) LP
PREORDER out 4/4/2025

*This is a pre-order. Items will ship on or around the release date of APRIL 4, 2025. For orders that have multiple items with pre-orders, all items will be held until every item from the order is available to ship. Please contact us with any questions.

UPC: 656605165837
Label: DEAD OCEANS
Format: LP
Release Date: APRIL 4, 2025

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.

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 vocalist Kat 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.”

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. Are We All Angels is
the highly anticipated follow-up to Scowl’s debut, 2021’s How Flowers Grow, a
16-minute primal scream over punishing riffs. But amidst the pounding chaos, it
was the record’s sonic outlier, a cleaner interlude called “Seeds to Sow,” that,
true to its name, planted the seed for what was to come for the band. “It kind of
laid out this destiny for us, and I feel like now we’re fulfilling that,” says drummer
Cole Gilbert. The band continued to expand their sound on 2023’s widely
acclaimed Psychic Dance Routine EP, incorporating more pop hooks and
favoring gentler singing over heavy screaming, paving the way for what would
come next.

Scowl’s growth got a huge boost from producer Will Yip (Turnstile,
Title Fight, Code Orange, Balance and Composure), who broadened the band’s
scope. “Will would say, ‘Everything you have here is correct, but it’s in the wrong
place,’” says Gilbert. Moss adds: “Will really helped restructure a lot of the
material. Some songs he tore apart to make more space for the really good
hooks and choruses.” But even through this more eclectic approach, Scowl
loses none of their edge, and still manages to convey the anger and frustration
that lies underneath. They are deeply committed to carrying the ethos of punk
and its sense of community. “Hardcore and punk have sculpted how we
operate, what we want to do as a band, and how we participate,” says guitarist
Malachi Greene. “At our core, we are a punk and a hardcore band, regardless of
how the song shifts and changes.”