Scowl fully blossom on Are We All Angels

Yet it remains distinctly compelling. With each new group reaching up to a higher shelf, the question remains – what are they charging out of the gates with?

Scowl's second full-length album is the Santa Cruz five-piece reckoning with their road to this much grander stage, while flourishing in the hard-won freedom. This promo cycle has seen them rise to TV with a performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and getting profiled in the New York Times – the underground, this is not.

Their debut for label Dead Oceans, Are We All Angels is a full hard-astern into the melodic bread crumbs they first trailed on debut album How Flowers Grow, before proceeding to fully indulge in this aspect across 2022's Psychic Dance Routine EP (which twisted their voracious hardcore into brilliantly melodious and trippy rock). But Are We All Angels finds Scowl leveling up with the same instrumental backline thundering away while Kat Moss leans more heavily into clean vocals – while getting a few things off her chest.

"Special" kicks off the album's thesis, which they dig their heels into immediately, with Moss pleading, "I don't want to be special" and "I don't wanna be different". “B.A.B.E” fires back at the noise Scowl seem to be surrounded by – nay drowning in: “Everyone here could you please shut up / I gotta catch my breath,” Moss demands between verses that still tote daggering vocals. The message is clear from the start: Scowl need you to listen, hear what they're saying – for their sanity.

Adjusting to this evolved, full-length version of Scowl isn’t a challenge. The hardcore throughline still prickles, sounding as studiously chaotic and honed in as ever. But, more pivotally, there are elements yet to be fully unravelled which make for the most compelling listen. One of the most interesting moments comes on "Fleshed Out", with Moss's haunting scream kicking through the stop-start punk, it feels like the spiritual next step of Psychic Dance Routine. "Suffer The Fool (How High Are You)" calls back to the highs of the 00s pop-punk, nodding to the chugging euphoria, while “Not Hell, Not Heaven” is a rip-roaring rock number that scatters Moss' vocals.

Sanding the hard-edged hardcore down to a more palatable punk-pop, aided by the alt-scene production maestro Will Yip, Are We All Angels is positively a double-album by their hardcore standards (their debut clocked in at a blistering 16-minutes). This 33-minute introduction to the next evolution of Scowl answers a question posed on their debut: “I just wanna know, is this how flowers grow?” The answer is yes. They bloom and blossom into something wonderful that still has a heap of potential ready to sow.