Pete Wall
Within the belly of the good ship, Thekla, California four-piece Modern Color deliver a set that shimmers with emotional clarity and measured force. While the song structures are instantly familiar to any fan of post-hardcore—bursts of aggression, long melodic arcs, heart-on-sleeve lyrics—their performance feels almost revelatory. As any early nerves are thrown overboard, frontman Fleming Valenzuela is beaming as he lets the crowd know that this is the band’s first show on a boat. A dock in south-west England is a long way from Redondo Beach, but the band seem entirely at home tonight.
Modern Color trust the power of their songwriting and are very sparing with their interactions, but this does nothing to lessen the rapport that they build. The crowd, which steadily grows and edges forward as the band presses on, responds in kind: nodding heads become lurching bodies and those at the periphery of the room begin to give their full attention. Clean and screamed vocals are blended seamlessly, and the interplay between melody and dissonance is handled deftly by a band who seem absolutely in their element. Tonight’s 9-song set is dominated by tracks from last year’s There Goes the Dream and its predecessor From the Leaves of Your Garden and despite the quality of both records, all the material is elevated in the live setting.
For a band that operates just beneath the algorithmic radar for many, Modern Color’s shows on this run could turn a lot of new fans in their direction.
Where Modern Color offer catharsis by slow-burn and personal disclosure, Scowl deliver theirs like a detonation. Their 15-song set doesn’t so much start as it erupts, driven by the urgency of a band with something to prove and plenty to expel.
Drawing heavily from their latest, somewhat divisive, record Are We All Angels, Scowl’s performance strikes a balance between chaos and control. The crowd doesn’t need permission to move; the moment the first downbeat hits, the floor transforms. By the time genre-bending single ‘Shot Down’ comes around, one of the speaker stacks swings pendulous overhead, as if it too has given in to the conviction in the room. When Kat Moss – a blur of sparkling energy throughout – commands the crowd to “Spin this shit in a fucking circle” as the band kick into ‘Bloodhound’, a furious circle pit duly opens.
There’s something unmistakably timely about Scowl’s fury. In a year already saturated with performative outrage and tepid genre crossovers, their sound remains raw, intentional, and urgent as a live proposition. Even their most chaotic moments are underpinned by structure and a clarity of purpose. Yet, for all the pulverizing energy and clear sincerity at the core of the performance, it’s hard to forget the relatively tepid reception to their apparent recalibration as a band. Are We All Angels certainly didn’t feel like the work of a band still capable of being this visceral and cathartic live, but here we are? As if to illustrate this point, by the time the set closes with ‘Are We All Angels’ and ‘Special’, the tracks that bookend the new record, the chants for an encore aren’t some half-hearted token gesture—they’re a rabid demand. And just when it feels like too big of an ask, the band come back out and smash through a ferocious rendition of early rager ‘Retail Hell’ to close out the night. It’s a glorious spectacle and further testament to how potent a force Scowl remain, no matter what the world wants to say about them.