Are Scowl industry plants?

No, you moron. Love em or hate em, the Santa Cruz band earned every ounce of their success.

Kat Moss, the vocalist of hardcore punk band Scowl, recently made a pointed Instagram post addressing accusations that her band were “industry plants”.

”I am sick of hearing the phrase ‘Industry plant’ every single time Scowl experiences success” she says. “Our friends bands-bands commonly full of men, will sign brand deals, have a song in a commercial, get a co-sign from massively successful musicians, etc… yet I never read whisperings of whether or not they deserve those successes, whether or not they are valid enough, GOOD enough, or worked hard enough to be deserving of that success. Is our success never valid enough for you?”

I didn’t personally see any of these comments calling the band plants. I’ve recently deactivated my Twitter account and have never been a big Reddit user, precisely for this reason. I’m tired of reading opinions from dipshits who use terms like “industry plant” to describe a band with under 200,000 Spotify listeners because they have an article in Rolling Stone.

I don’t like Scowl. My disdain for them is probably the worst kept secret in my portfolio. I think their music stinks and I don’t agree with their business ethos. I’ve had my hater-vision locked on them for quite some time, so I feel overly qualified in chalking what they’ve earned up to the hard work of the band and their relatively small team at Flatspot Records.

That being said, Scowl’s ascension has been fast and furious. They went from local openers to playing a Taco Bell event at the Women’s World Cup in just over two years. I understand how this could confound someone dumb and out of touch enough to make troll posts on r/Hardcore, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention. Let’s break it down.

Scowl started playing shows and released their first EP in 2019. Hardcore wasn’t a scene any sane person would hitch their financial wagon to at that point. We all thought the genre was in a good place, but not a soul could have predicted the boost in popularity we saw during and after the pandemic. No industry bigwig would “plant” a band in a niche genre where commercial aspirations are often scoffed at. Maybe this accusation would make sense if Scowl started in 2021 when shit was already popping off, but they didn’t. There’s irrefutable proof of them existing at a time when the genre they were playing had zero commercial viability.

The band’s first big break was doing support on the Real Bay Shit show in 2021. This was one of the first major events post-pandemic, and it put Scowl on the national radar. Twitter trolls apparently can’t understand how this happened, which is the main reason why their bands will never leave the practice space or local bar.

Any successful band needs an interesting or captivating frontperson. Trudging up on stage in your mesh shorts and a band shirt to scream “We have shirts in the back, now side to fucking side!” only works if you’re really damn good, and even then, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Kat Moss, on the other hand, is probably the most compelling person in hardcore when it comes to style and aesthetics. People saw video of Scowl at the RBS show and said “wow, that chick looks really cool! I wonder what her band is about.”

Some mouthbreather somewhere is probably crying about how “they never would have been on that show if they weren’t friends with all the cool guys” but guess what? The people in that band have apparently been hustling, going to shows and doing shit in the scene for years. You don’t make friends sitting on a message board all day, so brush your dusty ass off and go outside!

I’m not sure how soon the band signed to Flatspot Records after their initial wave of hype, but that relationship has been instrumental in raising their profile. Again, the know-nothings might think this is the work of some shadowy cabal. In actuality, it was two or three people who thought “hardcore is having a moment right now. Let’s create a diverse roster of likeable bands and take every chance we get to put them in front of the media.” Have you noticed most of these listicles big-upping Scowl also mention their label mates in Speed, End It and Zulu?

No, it’s not a conspiracy. It’s one person at Flatspot busting her ass and leveraging her connections to execute a very simple yet effective plan. I think a lot of the resulting media coverage is ham-fisted and corny, but don’t hate the player, hate the game, baby! This is PR 101 and if these other hardcore labels can’t figure it out then fuck ‘em.

Meanwhile, Scowl has been road-dogging it, announcing what seems like a new tour every month for two years straight. Like Kat’s post says, they’ve fought through illness, mental health stuff and injury to stay on the road non-stop, doing it the way any busted old head will tell you it “should be done”. I don’t even think an industry overlord would green-light them playing that many shows. They’d probably pick and choose “the right looks” to get as many eyes on them before Coachella. I’ll tell you this much — they certainly wouldn’t be doing ten day runs of people’s basements with MSPaint three times a year.

Has Scowl taken opportunities I would personally pass on to get more eyes on their music? Absolutely. Does their vision for the band’s future align with how I think hardcore punk should operate? Probably not. Is my opinion important? Hell no! Even if it was, one thing I would never take away from this band is that they did it all by themselves, or perhaps more aptly, with the help of their friends and mentors in the hardcore community.

Online trolls don’t have friends, so they could never conceive of someone lending a helping hand to platform their music. This is where the “industry plant” allegations stem from — a lack of social awareness and general commitment to the scene we share.

I find it upsetting that someone as cool and busy as Kat from Scowl was bothered enough by this horseshit to make a post about it. Apparently there were sexist undertones to the messages as well, which is the wackest shit I’ve ever heard, if not entirely surprising. If I could say one thing to Scowl it would be “don’t even listen to these fools, keep on playing Madison Square Garden while they sit behind a screen, having probably not even been to a show in three months”. You know how it goes with these people. And if you’re one of them, it’s time to pay more attention to your surroundings, because you sound like an idiot.