When I first met Mike Bifolco at a show here in Los Angeles a few years ago, we instantly connected via our shared love for Ink & Dagger. Since then, the Pennsylvania native has gone from part-time musician to touring throughtout the world as a member of Scowl.
A talented guitarist and songwriter, Mike's discography is an impressive one. Throughout the years, he's also been a member of Fixation, Drowse, and Chemical Fix, three of the best hardcore bands to come out of the East Coast in the last decade. Not to mention his work in side project Action News, and solo work as Low Shade.
We talked about doing this interview for quite a while, so with Scowl about to enter a heavy touring campaign for their forthcoming second album, Are We All Angels, we finally got it down.
In addition to sharing Mike's inspiring story, my hope is that more No Echo readers will check out his other contributions to hardcore because those records deserve everyone's attention.
Tell me a bit about your upbringing. I remember you mentioning to me in a conversation having someone in your family introducing you to cool music at a very young age?
Yeah, so when I was around 10, I would show up to family functions wearing G-Unit sneakers while reciting every word to “The Real Slim Shady” and this probably gave my Aunt Amy an aneurysm because that year for my birthday she handed me a grip of burnt punk CDs that ultimately changed my life.
After that, she was constantly picking me up from school or my house and driving us into Philadelphia to see bands like The Bouncing Souls, Circle Jerks, NOFX, Screeching Weasel, Pennywise, etc.
If my aunt wasn’t able to take me to a show, I would have to try and figure out what bands I could easily convince my dad to drive into the city and take us to. The only time that worked was when bands like Flogging Molly, or Dropkick Murphys came to town.
My dad was a volunteer firefighter at the time so I knew once I showed him the bagpipes and Irish clovers it would be game over. I saw those bands literally every time they came near Philadelphia.
Did you find friends in school that were fellow punk/hardcore fans, or was that hard to find where you grew up at the time? What were some of the early bands/shows you saw?
So, I know you’re not supposed to say this but I actually feel very lucky to have gone to school and lived where I did. I went to Pennridge High School, located in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, about 45 mins north of Philly. It's pretty much smack dab in between Wilkes-Barre and Philadelphia.
At that school is where I met my lifelong friends Aaron Heard (Jesus Piece, Nothing), Dan White (Fixation, Wild Red, Demonstrate), Evan Zuk (Drowse, Ortleibs), and also my super lovely badass partner, Morgan. We all basically grew up going to local shows in the burbs together seeing a lot of hardcore bands like Mother of Mercy, Agitator, Times Up.
I remember walking around the halls as a freshman wearing a Minor Threat shirt and some older kid pointed me out and said, “you’re cool, come to this show,” and handed me a flyer for a show that was happening in some kid's parents house in the living room where this band Title Fight was gonna play. I still have this flyer in a shoebox in my room.
As a kid, I found myself more into punk than hardcore so I would often be getting rides 30 mins up 309 to a place called the Crocodile Rock Cafe located in Allentown, Pennsylvania where I would see bands like D.R.I., NOFX, Streetlight Manifesto, Common Enemy, and The Adicts.
It was the first time I had met punks from other towns and is where I met my friend and future Roomate TJ Haslett (Bumpin Uglies). I even played some of my first shows here where I had to literally sell tickets just so my band could open up for The Casualties (fuck you, Tom Taylor). Also, it was the first place I ever got drunk underage because Evil Jared Hasselhoff from the Bloodhound Gang poured Jäger in my mouth after I lied and said I was 21. Good times.
It wasn’t till my sophomore or senior year of high school that I started sneaking to Philly to go to punk shows. One time, I lied and said I was going to a friends house just so I could catch a ride to Philly to go sneak into a 21+ show to see Youth Brigade play some dive bar.
The Casualties were also playing that show and during their set I got randomly selected out of the crowd to come on stage and play a song with the band. That was the first time I ever held a guitar on a stage, playing some 60-second punk song with the Casualties:
Philadelphia punk shows scared me back then, but I was obsessed. I would hang out at this crusty-ass punk house in Fishtown called the Fish Flat and see street punk bands like Combat Crisis, Bucketflush, Hate and War, Star Fucking Hipsters. This place was chaos unlike anything I had seen before. People were zip-lining from the ceiling, smashing 40oz bottles, lighting tires on fire, having sex, doing drugs…and all while the bands were playing…it was awesome.
That is where I met this punk kid who was a couple years younger than me with snakebites, and a bike lock chain around his neck named Justin Pringle (Fixation, Jacked Chicks). Traveling for shows as much as I did introduced me to so many different scenes and people who I still remain close with. All of my closest friends in life I met at a show I went to when I was kid.
I know you’re a big fan of the darker/horror-inspired side of hardcore punk. What are some of the bands that you especially gravitated towards?
Back when I was a kid and Hot Topic still smelled weird, I had asked the guy working the counter about this skull logo I had seen everywhere that had interested me. Without hesitation he walked over to the CD rack and handed me a CD called Static Age by the Misfits. He told me I had to buy it and man he was right.
That CD this random Hot Topic dude made me buy absolutely changed my life and has drastically influenced every music project I have ever done. Even the promo shoots in the insert have subconsciously affected the way I want to look in pictures. This band consumed me. I probably wore a Misfits shirt almost every day in high school to the point where I remember someone asking me if it was my own band.
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I was immediately drawn to any sort of high-energy punk band that even remotely resembled the Misfits. Bands like AFI, Alkaline Trio, Dead Kennedys, Nerve Agents, Murder City Devils, Blitzkid, and Samhain became my biggest influences.
It wasn’t until my late teens early 20s when a friend was like, “hey, you might like this hardcore punk band from the '90s. They are vampires who wear eye makeup and they’re from Philadelphia.” It was Ink & Dagger and I was sold immediately.
That’s a great segue into Drowse. How did that band come together, and talk about the influences that you guys wanted to explore.
So one time, Evan Zuk and I went to a show in a West Philly kitchen to see the Night Birds record release with Omegas, and this band from New Jersey called Altered Boys. The Altered Boys set was short, fast, and most of all they were really pissed. After their set, I looked at Evan and was like, “you wanna start a band like that?," and Evan said, “yup."
We wanted to write songs that sounded like a lot of Youth Attack bands we were listening to at the time like Salvation, Raw Nerve, Vile Gash. That, mixed with the vibes of all the horror punk bands we love like Ink & Dagger, Misfits, and AFI. It ended up creating this really unique sound and style we’ve never heard and I still have never heard a band that sounds like Drowse.
The songs were fast, noisy, misanthropic hardcore punk songs that also had this darker almost goth-y tone to them. We also wanted to just freak people out so Evan would do things like tie a plastic bag tightly around his head or tell us (not the crowd) that this is the show he was gonna kill himself at. Dudes wild…
We recorded our first 7” with Wyatt Oberholzer who then later replaced original bass player, Mike Haley. It was basically us and a constant rotating door of drummers. I probably sat and played the first EP with at least 10 different drummers over the course of that band. it was exhausting. If I knew how to play drums I’d never talk to anyone ever again.
Though the earliest Drowse material was sick, 2020's Dance in the Decay LP was one of the best releases of that year. There’s a gloomy feel to that record that suits the material perfectly.
Damn, so I actually always forget we recorded the instruments to that record twice! We had been sitting on most of those songs for some time so we knew the kind of record we wanted to make. After we recorded it the first time, we just didn’t think we did what we were tryna do so we went back and did it all again. Evan Zuk, however, nailed all the vocals in one take sitting in a dark vocal booth by himself drinking wine. Dude is wild…
Dance in the Decay came out Halloween 2020 which was conveniently at the start of the global pandemic so it was one of the many great records that came out around that time that didnt really survive COVID.
By the time shows came back, Wyatt left Drowse and we just stopped playing because we were so busy with Fixation and Chemical Fix. The Drowse LP is still to this day the most “me” record I have ever made and would love to bring that band back from the dead one day.
Let’s talk about Fixation, another hardcore band you played in at the same time you were in Drowse. What’s the genesis story there?
So I wanted to start a band that more resembled the early 2000s fastcore stuff I was listening to at the time like Tear It Up, Cut the Shit, Bones Brigade, mixed with more modern style of hardcore.
I had met this dude named Matt that had just moved to Philly and seemed to be a cool dude super interested in singing a band with a similar vibe so I got my long time friend Dan White to play drums and Justin Pringle to play bass.
We wrote some EPs, did some tours. It wasn’t until later that I realized the dude fronting this band I started was a total P.O.S. scumbag and was tryna rip off my friends and other bands.
The next thing Fixation did was bring in Wyatt Oberholzer to front the band. He had already been recording the band before joining, and you had played with him in Drowse.
So like less than two weeks before our EP record release in Philly, me, Pringle, and Wyatt (who wasn’t even in Fixation at the time) decided to kick our singer out of the band because we just didn’t want him (or his wife) around Philly to mooch off our friends and other bands anymore. We never saw them again but maybe if you’re lucky they might move to your town and ask ya to play in their new religious goth band.
Anyways, we ended up playing our record release with Bob Wilson filling in on vocals and we opened with the Let Down intro. It was a legendary moment. After that, we had to find a new singer. That’s when I told (not asked) Wyatt that he was now gonna sing in Fixation. So I guess I take partial blame for that band falling apart too [laughs].
2022 saw the release of Fixation’s sole album, The Secrets We Keep. Like the Drowse LP, I feel The Secrets We Keep was tremendously underrated. How do you feel about the material on it, and why didn’t the band play more shows or tour around it?
Wyatt totally changed the sound of Fixation, and for the absolute best. Prior to the one try out Wyatt had before I forced him to be in the band, we had never heard Wyatt on a mic. His vocals were just perfect.
I feel like 'The Secrets We Keep' was the record we have all wanted to make our entire lives. It’s like a perfect blend of 'Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes' by AFI, and 'Background Music' by American Nightmare. Some of my favorite guitar riffs I have ever written are on that record.
Unfortunately, due to COVID and tensions within the band, we never played a show after the record came out, which is a shame because if we actually toured off that record people would finally realize Dan White is the best drummer in Pennsylvania. Having a record that you have worked so hard to achieve just fade away is one of the most soul crushing experiences of my entire life. I still hope to play that record live one day.
We can’t forget Chemical Fix, another band of yours that is slept on.
During the Drowse era, and when Fixation was first starting out, Wyatt was playing in a band called Caffeine with Bren King on vocals, Mike Walsh on drums, and Joe Hoban (RIP) on guitar. They were having scheduling conflicts with Joe and kinda wanted a fresh start so they asked me to play guitar and we changed the name to Chemical Fix.
I think I'm the one who came up with that name. I was probably listening to My Chemical Romance and threw in the word “fix” comically because I was already in Fixation and Wyatt (who recorded us and sometimes even filled in on bass at the time) was also considered a loose member.
The band name just stuck. It’s funny cause we had never even planned on both bands sharing so many members till it just happened.
We've talked about this before, but you've told me that playing in Chemical Fix made you a better guitarist.
Chemical Fix was unlike any band I had ever played in before because they were all way better musicians than me so it was hard to keep up sometimes. It was like old American Nightmare and Carry On mixed with Punch and Coke Bust.
Having to keep up with Mike Walsh’s blast beats has made me such a better musician and I urge anyone to watch that dudes drum vids. I wanted to play guitar in a fast and pissed-off hardcore punk band and that’s exactly what that was.
The Our Shade Casts Far album came out in 2021 on Safe Inside Records. Again, stellar songs and production, but I didn’t see enough people talking about the record. Do you think that came down to not touring enough, or not being on one of the “cool” labels of the moment, or perhaps, both?
Truly another perfect record. So, one of the main issue I have always had with all my bands is touring. I have always had my life set up so that I could leave and go on tour at any moment in time because that is what I have always wanted to do. For everyone else, it was a much harder goal to accomplish. Everyone else had real jobs, a relationship, or just a more stable life than me.
Chemical Fix probably did the most touring out of all our other bands but still never felt like it was enough. That and the fact that 3 of us were constantly rotating between Drowse, Fixation, and Chemical Fix which caused issues when someone would hit me up like, “which one of your fast hardcore punk bands wants to play this beatdown show?” It was like tryna pick which one of your kids to feed. It just made everything way more complicated.
Also, I feel like my bands were playing during a sort of weird time in the Philly scene. We would play mostly hardcore shows in front of hardcore kids who thought we were too punk but then we would play punk shows in front of punks who thought we were too hardcore. A classic tale as old as time.
READ MORE: Timmy Greene (No Justice, Bladecrasher) Looks Back on His Wild Hardcore Years
Your love of Ink & Dagger resulted in Chemical Fix releasing a cover of “Bloodlust” in 2023.
Funny thing about the Ink and Dagger cover is actually Drowse did it first, but then one year at This is Hardcore Fest, Chemical Fix covered it because we all knew it already. It went off so well that we decided to record it. I will continue to rep Ink and Dagger and Philadelphia in every band I am in and will ever be in till the end of time.
What’s the story behind Action News, a project also featuring some heavy-hitters from the Philly music scene? Was it a one-off deal?
So, during COVID, when you couldn’t go to bars anymore, my friend Pat Troxell (Creepoid, Mugger, Bad Kids Presents, Lovelorn), Aaron Heard (Jesus Piece, Nothing) and myself were at this bar and Pat was telling us (not asking) that we were gonna start this Philly band during lockdown and call it Action News.
He said we were even gonna open up with the little theme song jingle. We both said no, then Pat said yes and sent me a bunch of Das Oath, XfilesX, songs to rip off. With Pat on vocals, Aaron on bass, and me on guitar we then recruited Port Richmond natives Jeff Barrow (Nuclear Blast Records) on drums and Jordan Burk (Rock Bottom) on second guitar.
The plan was to just write an hardcore punk EP and maybe play some outside gigs. Our first show was at the Chemical Fix record release show we set up outside on an abandoned pier behind a Walmart in south Philly. 600 people showed up and set off fireworks the whole time even after the Coast Guard showed up. It was absolutely insane.
We played a couple shows after that but then it just fizzled away because everyone got busy once shows started popping off again. Maybe the news team will assemble again someday.
Before we move on to Scowl, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about your solo project, Low Shade.
Like Action News, Low Shade was another project I gave myself just to sort of keep myself busy during the quarantines. I wrote and recorded those songs by myself in my basement using audacity and sent them to Wyatt to mix and master. He texted me back 2 mins later telling me the files were “unusable” so I had to go over to his house immediately and rerecord the songs on his computer using fake drums.
I just wanted to do a campy horror punk project like the Misfits since Halloween was coming up. Also, I was fucking bored out of my mind and needed a task. I was tryna write songs that sounded like harder Static Age-era songs while also tryna rip off Davey Havok in the begging of the song “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing."
I never did vocals before in my life so I would have to blast Municipal Waste on the TV upstairs so the neighbors couldn’t hear me screaming in my basement. I would immediately blow my shit out within 2 takes and have to wait 3 days to re record that line till my voice blew again. Rinse and repeat. I ended up putting out a 2-song lathe cut 7” on my friend Jared Johnson’s label, Sore Ear Collective. We had a lot of fun putting it all together.
With both of us being huge Fiend Club Member fans, we wanted to just do something with the same exact vibe. We made little Low Shade postcards that were individually stamped and numbered. We made Low Shade pins and lollipops (you weren’t supposed to eat those and im sorry if you did). I even bought a trench coat and made a fake bloody mask so Evan Zuk could take campy promo pics for the record. We really went all out.
I would assemble all these little trinkets together and put them with the 7”s in Halloween trick or treat bags I got from the dollar store. When it all dropped, my friends rolled their eyes at me like, “Of course you did this,” but then they sold out immediately. I never played a show but was supposed to release new stuff this year but never got around to it. Maybe next year.
How did you become a member of Scowl? I actually saw Chemical Fix play with Scowl and American Nightmare here in Los Angeles before you were a member, so I’m assuming you met through playing shows together?
I first met [Scowl guitarist] Malachi Greene when he booked Fixation at a tiny library in Santa Cruz called SubRosa. Our award winning personalities immediately made us become friends and I would stay with him every time my bands would come out to California. He would take us out to the abandoned Santa Cruz boardwalk bridge from the movie The Lost Boys and make us walk across it. I don’t love heights but I had to do it for the vampires, obviously.
In January of 2022, Chemical Fix, Scowl, and American Nightmare were out doing a 4-day California tour, but due to COVID, the last couple shows didn’t happen. Knowing we spent a lot of money to get out to Califonia, Scowl hit up some friends and ended they up setting up a last minute DIY show at a ballet studio in Oxnard. It was Scowl, Chemical Fix, Ceramik, and In Time. The whole room was packed and going wild.
I played the Chemical Fix set wearing Scowl booty shorts and did a split, which is important for the timeline because I can no longer move like that due to my current destroyed body. After that spiritually uplifting show, I ended up jumping in the Ccowl van for the 5-hour ride back to Santa Cruz. That was the first night I stayed up with [bassist] Bailey [Lupo] during an overnight drive listening to Heartwork by Carcass. This is now a tradition.
Scowl ended up pulling more strings and helped get Chemical Fix on one last show before we went back home to Philly. It was in San Francisco with SPY, Raw Brigade, and Lower Species. This was the first time I would be meeting the people that were closest to the members of Scowl. Their first impression of me was me getting black out drunk and diving off the walls during SPY while also accidentally ripping lights down on Bailey’s sister and friends. Not my brightest moment but my behavior has improved immensely since then.
Scowl really saved our asses on that tour and we all became like family immediately so when I found out they were coming to Philly to record their new EP, Psychic Dance Routine. I told them they could absolutely crash at my house.
Scowl ended up staying at my house in Philly for like 2 weeks when they came over to record Psychic Dance Routine with producer Will Yip. Also, since we had a debt we had to repay, we had Scowl hop on the show Chemical Fix was playing at a Sonic drive-thru.
A couple weeks before they came to Philly is when Malachi called me and asked if I wanted to play second guitar on the upcoming 3-month-long Scowl tour and possibly even join the band if everything went smoothly. We had been making jokes to each other about the possibility of me coming on tour with them to play second guitar and one day he actually just called me and asked.
I immediately quit my job of working with 3-year-olds to go on tour and eventually join Scowl. 4 months later, at a show during our set, I jumped and completely tore my ACL and both meniscus having to get immediate surgery…classic.
We chatted at some event last year and you were telling me how happy you were being in a band that worked so much on the road. Has the traveling and being away from home been challenging at all for you? It’s been said that touring bands get paid for all of the travel and inconveniences that come along with that, and not the actual shows.
I love touring and playing shows. It’s all I have ever wanted to do and I don’t have a backup plan for anything else. I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would tour this much so it feels hard to even complain when it’s something you have wanted your whole life.
At the same time, it does get really challenging being away from home for so long. You start to lose contact with friends/family and what’s goin on in your home scene that you spent so much time being a part of. Besides, to play music, I have always wanted to go on tour to just sort of get away from everything that was happening at home. Now im older and in a loving relationship with someone I grew up going to shows with who also has a dog that I would literally take a cannon ball to the face for so it’s harder to be away from home now.
I don't know about that second part, because I only get paid in Taco Bell coupons.
Scowl is releasing your second album, Are We All Angels, in April. It looks like you'll be busy as hell this year.
So, I am currently plopped on my couch in Philadelphia and I have 5 more days at home before I don’t see my bed for a while. We are heading to Miami to play Flatsport World and then get aboard the 4-day Flogging Molly Cruise (without flogging Molly cause they dropped) from Miami to Jamaica.
Then in March, we start our full US tour with Movements and Citizen. So keep an eye out we ain’t slowing down.
READ MORE: End It Singer Akil Godsey on His Whirlwind Year & Online Haters Complaining About Hardcore
If you had to choose one record that epitomizes why you love punk so deeply, what would it be?
Since it's been in heavy rotation this week, I’m gonna have to say Destruction By Definition by the Suicide Machines.
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Are We All Angels will be out on April 4th via Dead Oceans (pre-order).
Scowl tour dates are up on the band's official website.
Tagged: a life in hardcore, chemical fix, drowse, fixation, low shade, scowl
