Scowl – ‘Psychic Dance Routine’ EP review: a triumphant explosion of energy

5 April, 2023

scowl

There’s a storm brewing on the West Coast. Across California, a legion of hardcore punk bands are bringing their vital, relentless, and flat-out fun sound to a global audience like never before, collecting streams in the hundreds of thousands and scaling up major festival lineups. “The Californian scene is explosive, and it’s like a colour bomb — there’s something for everyone,” Scowl vocalist Kat Moss told NME last year, describing how her band and their peers Drain, Zulu and Militarie Gun, among others, are driven by a collective desire to push their scene forward into new territories. These acts are committed to making hardcore – a genre that perhaps once felt closed-off toward outsiders – welcoming for new fans, while trading fresh ideas and elevating their community to a greater visibility.

READ MORE: How California became a hotbed for vital new hardcore bands

With fans in Post Malone and Hayley Williams, plus a recent support slot for Limp Bizkit to their name, Scowl are leading the charge of this movement. The tantalisingly raw ‘Psychic Dance Routine’ EP follows the band’s 2021 debut album ‘Where The Flowers Grow’, and sees Scowl commit themselves to their big, subversive vision with total dedication: across five tracks, they grab percussive elements, noise solos and playful rhythmic changes – all of which parallel the colour and magnitude of their energy. Both the title track and ‘Opening Night’ offer evidence of how Scowl are supercharging their melodies by making them cleaner and catchier, yet without compromising the zeal at their heart.

Crucially, the EP continues to affirm that Scowl are no longer just a great hardcore band, but a great rock one, too. Even with the constraints of a two-minute song, they can sprint through different textures; ‘Shot Down’, for example, switches from a constant rush of harsh vocal tones to a slow-burning, distorted grunge rock squall à la Hole. They allow the energy to dip for dynamic effect – the track’s abrupt change in tempo feels akin to momentarily catching your breath after losing your shit in the pit.

There are moments here where Scowl suddenly vanish for a few empty, riffless seconds, before tumbling back into the melody with a heightened speed and force – it’s a recurring motif on ‘Sold Out’. Sonically, the momentum rarely ever falters across the EP, but the lyrics don’t always hit the mark. ‘Wired’ speaks of online overstimulation and worsening attention spans in broad strokes, suggesting that as a songwriter, Moss is still finding her feet when broaching current issues.

It would be an overstatement to call ‘Psychic Dance Routine’ a reinvention of Scowl’s sound, but there is certainly an evolution taking place. But the EP isn’t wholly about the strides taken to sound unlike anything else in hardcore right now; these songs radiate with the laughter, passion and confidence of a band who know they have unlocked something special.