Chasing Fridays: Her New Knife, Scowl, Haywire, more

Hello and welcome back to Chasing Fridays – my weekly roundup of music criticism and gig reviews. Work on my forthcoming shoegaze book is ramping up, so I haven't listened to too much new music over the last couple weeks. That said, I was able to attend a stacked hardcore show this past Monday, which I blogged about alongside some ruminations on a couple fresh singles and one new album. Technically, I also wrote about Ken Carson this week for the recently reactivated Endless Scroll newsletter, which you can read here every Thursday if you're so inclined. But this is my blog, and I've got my thoughts on the aforementioned musical happenings down below.

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Her New Knife - "purepurepure"

Over the summer, I finally caught Her New Knife live and heard them debut a set full of new material, including "purepurepure." The lead single from their upcoming Julia's War EP is a lot different than the digitally decaying shoegaze of February's nightcore+++ EP, which is some of the highest quality FFO: They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Feeble Little Horse-core this side of the Philly shoegaze boom. Her New Knife are creeping into darker, spikier noise-rock catacombs on "purepurepure," capturing that Sister-era Sonic Youth sense of industrial unease, with a bassline that stalks cat-like and guitars that blink on and off like headlights in the back of a sketchy parking lot. When the distortion comes in it doesn't stuff your ears with cotton (as is the shoegaze way) but rather pricks and prods your synapses; more of a grim assault than a cheeky whoopie cushion of guitar fizz, the way the playful nightcore+++ so often was. I suppose you could say "purepurepure" is Her New Knife – sharpened.

Scowl - "Special"

Scowl are a band who get plenty of shit from hardcore dudes just for a) existing as a hardcore band with a non-male vocalist, and b) being a hardcore band who clearly don't want to be a hardcore band anymore. However, I'd like to offer some good-faith criticisms that aren't rooted in shallow misogyny or a vapid incuriosity toward sounds that aren't fast and angry. Because I do think Scowl are an interesting band and also an interesting band to talk/write about.

Scowl, who just signed to Dead Oceans earlier this week (that's Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers' label, mind you), picked up an unexpected wind of success during the post-lockdown summer of 2021, when the Bay Area hardcore scene was quickly becoming an international hotspot thanks to Gulch, Drain, and eventually Sunami breaking far beyond their staggeringly huge local followings. Scowl were part of that mix, too, and their 2021 debut, How Flowers Grow, despite being a relatively average sounding dose of gnarled hardcore punk, suddenly rocketed them to the forefront of the genre – in a way I'm sure even Scowl didn't anticipate. There were good tracks on that album, and Scowl quickly became a well-liked live band, but with all of the media attention they received in the wake of Turnstile's Glow On, where their vaguely melodic sound and colorful imagery suited the not-quite-accurate though still pervasive narrative that Hardcore Was Changing, Scowl quickly picked up a (largely unearned) reputation for being whatever the modern version of a "sellout" is.

Clearly, they didn't give a shit. Last year's Psychic Dance Routine EP saw them double-down on the clean-vocal grunge-core sound they teased on the How Flowers Grow cut "Seeds to Sow," and this year they did a track featuring the vocalists of Mannequin Pussy and Destroy Boys – bands who are not related to the hardcore world Scowl sprung from. My opinion on Psychic Dance Routine seems pretty widely-held: that the songs that aren't hardcore – the ones that kind of sound like Sleater-Kinney or Hole – are their best yet. Scowl are a better rock band than they are a hardcore band, and while I think this new track "Special" might be one of their strongest yet, I do think it suffers from trying to retain some hardcore sensibilities that I wish they'd just shrug off at this point.

The chorus and first verse of this song are massively catchy, and frontperson Kat Moss's clean singing sounds sturdier and more alluring than it did on last year's EP. But then she decides to scream during the second verse, and I lose all interest in the song. She's by no means a bad screamer, but screaming doesn't add to this grunge tune's emotional urgency – it only distracts from the otherwise cohesive instrumentation, and steals thunder from the memorable clean-sung vocals that hold down the first verse. I'm more physically moved by Moss melodically singing over the mountainous guitars and bulldozing drums than I am hearing her scream over them.

I don't know if the choice to scream is a purely artistic one, or if it's because Scowl feel they need to keep one toe in hardcore in order to appease the portion of their fanbase who likes their music heavy. But I'm of the mind that this is a compromise that serves neither side of their fanbase. The true-blue hardcore kids have already moved on from Scowl and won't think this is heavy enough despite the one verse of screaming, and I don't think the fanbase Scowl are presumably trying to capture by signing to one of the world's biggest "indie music" labels really care to hear hardcore shrieks in the middle of their sing-along songs. I'm ready for Scowl to just be a Rock Band – the way Militarie Gun became on Life Under the Gun, or Ceremony on Zoo. Not that I like Zoo (dreadful album), but it was at least coherent and unwaveringly bold in its rejection of Ceremony's hardcore roots. Scowl have that boldness in them, and they're a better rock band than Ceremony. I'm ready to hear them go all the fucking way in that direction. "Special" doesn't quite go there.

Gong Gong Gong, Mong Tong - Mongkok Duel 旺​角​龍​虎​鬥

Back in 2019, I interviewed Gong Gong Gong for a subscription coffee service that used to have a music magazine (ah, 2010s digital media...). The Hong Kong-based duo of Tom Ng and bassist Joshua Frank had put out a record called Phantom Rhythm that I really liked; a sort of desert bluesey, krautrock-y, Eastern psych-y smorgasbord that was meditative, catchy, and dancey in a really charming way. The next year, I interviewed Taiwanese psych-pop enigmas Mong Tong about their lore-laden debut,  Mystery秘神, which was released via Kikagaku Moyo member Go Kurosawa's label Guruguru Brain. I hadn't really thought of either of those bands since I wrote those respective articles, but last week I received an email from Gong Gong Gong's Joshua Frank about a new collaborative record that the two groups had just released, titled Mongkok Duel 旺​角​龍​虎​鬥. It's fucking great.

As is often the case when bands join forces, Mongtok Duel 旺​角​龍​虎​鬥 sounds a bit like both groups sandwiched together, which I wouldn't expect to work given how different these two are; Gong Gong Gong being a percussion-less guitar/bass duo whose singer intones in Cantonese, while Mong Tong's instrumental sampledelica is far rangier and less primitively rawk. However, the bands find perfect harmony on cuts like "Escaping Encirclements" and "Something Isn't Right," which buttress Gong Gong Gong's clickety-clacky guitar grooves with brittle drums and Hendrix-ian noodling. The aforementioned association might have something to do with this, but several tracks on here remind me of Kikagaku Moyo's 2021 collaborative album with Ryley Walker, where the smoldering psych of the former and the siltier ambient-folk of the latter coalesced neatly.

The middle passage of Mongkok Duel sometimes feels more like fragmented jams and "what-about-this" studio fuckery than through-composed songs, but the 12-minute "Criss-Cross" breathes smoldering life into the album like oxygen blown onto a dying fire. I'm not going to pretend this sort of music is a major staple of my musical diet, but I need at least one or two albums each year that scratch this particular itch (rip-roaring psych-rock), and Mongkok Duel has had its claws in me all week.

Terror, Cro-Mags, Haywire, Hold My Own, Limb From Limb, Pain Clinic @ Preserving

This was the third time I've seen Terror this year. They were one of my main gateways into hardcore in the early 2010s and remain a respected A-list act for zoomers in the present day, so their shows continue to be unbeatably fun. No other band on this bill had a chance of outshining them, but one set did come close, and that was Haywire. The Boston band are fronted by Austin Sparkman of Buried Dreams, Suburban Scum, Conservative Military Image, and a half-dozen other Northeast bands, but unlike most of his heavier and/or oi-punk groups, Haywire play down and dirty Boston hardcore of the Rival Mob variety. In fact, they covered Rival Mob's "Boot Party" at this show and the whole dancefloor went apeshit.

The 25-and-under crowd went apeshit for Haywire's own songs, too, and the reaction reinforced my fairly obvious take that they're the most hyped new hardcore band of 2024. Their debut album dropped in early January, and less than 12 months later they're touring with Terror and getting a crowd response that made the Cro-Mags look like unknown local openers. The popularity of a punk-based hardcore band like Haywire within the intensely metallized hardcore zeitgeist might just be a fluke, or it might mean that the tides are beginning to shift and the kids are once again interested in hearing bands you can sing and stomp along to, not just karate-mosh. I really only like a few Haywire songs, but their live show is undeniable, and I'm hopeful for the prospect of them opening the new generation's ears to a more "classic" hardcore sound.

However, the craziest set of the night was the aftershow. As soon as Terror finished playing, about half the crowd ran downstairs and piled into the venue's closet-sized DIY room to see Pain Clinic play a "surprise" set. Pain Clinic are a Pittsburgh beatdown band who formed in 2022 and quickly became one of the city's most popular new hardcore acts. All the dudes in the band have been involved in the scene for years, and although they've only released six songs, every set they play feels like an event. There were so many bodies in the room for this show that there was barely any room to mosh, but that didn't stop people. Some of the biggest dudes in the scene were pulverizing heads while a ragtag scrum of fans scrambled to take the mic from singer Ty Dawson during every line. If you know anything about the history of Pittsburgh beatdown, this felt like one of those legendary sets you hear whispers about decades after the fact. In other words, it wasn't for the casuals.