Scowl – How Flowers Grow

Scowl is rip a roaring hardcore band from Santa Cruz, California.  Their visceral attitude and shrieking delivery makes for a no holds barred, in your face breakaway from safety into an unapologetic breakdown of emotional transparency.  Their latest full length, How Flowers Grow, is an old-school romp through ten quick thrashing tracks sure to leave the uninitiated in a daze and hardcore veterans dizzy from relinquishing their inhibitions.

Kicking off with “Bloodhound,” Scowl stomps into the grounds with swelling anticipation before letting loose.  Vocalist Kat Moss growls with the best of them, drawing inspiration from the 80’s hardcore scene in style and harshness of delivery.  Emotions run high in what feels like an attempted escape from life’s oppressive forces.  There’s a sense of living with the risk of drowning under the waves of the everyday – relationships, social unrest, and the daily grind – you name it and it’s there.  Tracks like “Dead To Me” capture a sense of struggle that is synonymous with this brand of hardcore.  Others like “Trophy Hunter” screech and squeal in a mangled hardcore soundscape with Moss’ guttural growls barking in anguish.  “Idle Roaring Room” in particular has an 80’s hardcore vibe when the drumming picks up, while “Roots” finishes off with a sudden and ominous loss of momentum and screeching halt in tempo.  The twists and turns are surprisingly agile here, so there’s no point in predicting where How Flowers Grow will take you next until you’ve already arrived at each stop.

Fans of legacy hardcore bands like OFF! or Black Flag and more guttural bands like Grand Collapse stand to find substantial enjoyment in How Flowers Grow.  How Flowers Grow is Scowl’s heaviest offering yet – and that’s a very good thing.  At ten tracks in fifteen minutes Scowl pushes their limits to raw levels of adrenaline.  If you prefer your punk and hardcore with smoother melody, then this isn’t for you. For everyone else, you’ve just found a new fuel canister to rev your engine and fuel the flames.

How Flowers Grow can be streamed and purchased via Bandcamp