Crank It Up: Mugger’s Anna Troxell talks Luck Forever, misogyny in hardcore punk, and Brat

On Nov. 15, 2024, Texas-based hardcore punk outfit Mugger dropped their debut album Luck Forever. The Austin natives tackle a multitude of topical themes on their inaugural release, providing commentary on everything from grief, the political state of our country and gender imbalances in punk music scenes.

Composed of members from Creepoid, The Well and Radioactivity, Mugger is made up of Anna Troxell (vocals), Patrick Troxell (drums), Lisa Alley (bass) and Daniel Fried (guitars). Consisting entirely of rock music veterans, each member of the group brings forward their own distinct flare that sets Mugger apart from the rest of the hardcore scene.

Following the album’s release, Mugger received extensive praise from the press with New Noise Magazine calling Luck Forever “one of the best debut hardcore albums in a while.” This success, alongside touring with the likes of Scowl, Gel and Show Me the Body, has cemented Mugger as one of hardcore punk’s most exciting new acts.

With a relentless and unapologetic musicality, Mugger fearlessly tackles–and pokes fun–at sexism in punk music on their debut LP. Bringing together a soft vulnerability with an energetic ferocity, Mugger’s Luck Forever flawlessly recalls ‘80s and ‘90s hardcore influences.

With the current state of our nation, punk fans will find that Mugger has dropped their full-length debut at the perfect moment. As the world enters the dawn of a new day, Luck Forever serves as the ultimate soundtrack to our lives, with Anna’s screams and unbridled fury providing everlasting mantras for those seeking to lament.

In light of their debut album, Anna sat down with Uptight Magazine to discuss how she processes grief through her songwriting, which pop musicians inspire her the most, and the stories behind some of Luck Forever’s standout tracks.

UPTIGHT: I’m super excited to chat about all the success you've had! I know the album came out in November 2024 and it had a lot of praise from the press following the release. How did that feel for you guys seeing so much recognition for the album? 

ANNA TROXELL: It was great. It was unexpected to get such praise. I know we're a hardcore band, but we're not exactly what's trending right now in hardcore, you know? I'm 42, so I grew up in the ‘90s. We sound more like what was happening in the ‘80s, so it was cool to have some recognition because we just made music that we wanted to make. We're not trying to chase trends or anything. We've all been in hardcore for a long time. It's really cool that hardcore is such a big spotlight right now, and to be a part of that is super exciting. 

UPTIGHT: You and the other members have been in the game for a while now, but to see Mugger as a new group do so well already with their debut is cool to see. Looking back now, are there any songs off the album that stand out or might be your favorite? 

TROXELL: Yeah, “Dickhead Logic” is one of my favorites. I'm from Philadelphia, and I try to explain this to people in Texas that “dickhead” is our term of endearment for us. We just say it to everyone, and it's been fun just being down here in Texas and using Philly slang and people being like, “What the hell is going on?” 

But that song in particular is about the haters. We've heard a lot of people chattering about us who never come to a show but are all up in my stories and everything I post. I think the funny thing that's happened with social media and bands is that there are people who are really rooting for your downfall, but they just simply cannot look away at the same time. I just love that dynamic of having y'all keep looking. I really love to perform that song live especially. Because what we do in our live set is we play about halfway in, pause, and Lisa and I put on our “Mugger masks.” So that's the song right before I'm sort of transformed to my talking-shit persona. 

UPTIGHT: The album obviously just came out a couple of months ago, but do you have any future plans or projects coming out that people should be on the lookout for? 

TROXELL: We're just trying to enjoy our record for right now, but we're always writing. We definitely will release something in 2025, but probably not another full-length this year. We would like to maybe team up with somebody over in Europe or Australia, because we're getting a lot of plays in Australia, and find a band that we can link up and put something out together. Things are up in the air, because we're going to hopefully be touring a lot too. We shall see, but something will be released in 2025. 

UPTIGHT: Going off of that, Mugger is from Austin, Texas. Tell me a little bit about how the local Austin music scene has impacted your music. 

TROXELL: There's a huge scene here. There are so many good venues that people kind of pick and choose which venues they go to, but there's such a DIY underground scene with kids shows that we try to do a good balance of almost always playing all-ages venues–which is easier here in Texas to do than in some places in the country–but also then just doing straight up DIY for the kids shows. Our tour kickoff for this last run we literally just rented a generator and went down to this tunnel by Austin High and 100 kids showed up. 

People will complain that there's no hardcore scene in Austin. It's there. They might not go to all the clubs–it's not always necessarily supported in the club scene–but there's a huge, thriving local scene of young kids that care and give a shit. There was a very peaceful mosh, no crowd killing, and everyone cleaned up after. I was like, “Oh my God, the youth are giving me life. This is DIY.” 

UPTIGHT: Kind of switching gears a little bit, an overall theme you have on Luck Forever is gender imbalances and what it's like pursuing hardcore punk as a woman in the industry. You've been doing punk for a long time, but when it comes to the inclusion of women, do you think the scene has gotten better compared to when you first started? 

TROXELL: I think it ebbs and flows. Like in the ‘90s you had this huge riot grrrl movement, and then the early 2000s came in and it was really tough-guy dominant. I think yes, in many ways, it's better but it's not great. 

As good as it is, it’s still not very inclusive and it's tough because when you are a woman or anybody that doesn't fit this exact mold, you get stuck talking about it. And then you're the band that talks about it, and then it just sort of perpetuates being the other. But then I've just come to the conclusion where I'm like, “What else can I do?” You don't want to complain about being in an industry when you've gotten a lot of successes, and we're getting a lot of traction and hype right now and it's awesome, but it does suck to be constantly looked at as somebody who is side-eyed. 

It's frustrating to be somebody that grew up in hardcore since I was a teenager, but nobody should have to prove themselves. Nobody should have to have a history in hardcore to be in a hardcore band. Anybody that wants to join a band should be able to do so. It's like hardcore has this preciousness around it where you must protect it. I get that, but it also leads to exclusivity and gatekeeping and only the right people get in and we get to decide who those right people are. 

Overall I think we have a long way to go still in terms of making other people feel invited to the party and invited to not only show up and support, but be the person making the music and be the person in charge. I still get, “Are you in the band? Are you selling merch?” I'm the singer, you know what I mean? And it doesn't come from this place of, “We don't see you as an equal,” it's just so woven in [our society] that even somebody that thinks they're pretty liberal or forward-thinking says it. They say we have a female singer and they don't mean anything by it, but you could just pretend we're a regular band. Just pretend I'm a man and you don't have to describe me as a female singer because that's not our genre. 

UPTIGHT: It's very frustrating because why are we still doing this in 2025? We're still asking women in bands if they're the girlfriends of the musicians. Kind of like what you were saying, you think it's getting better because all these bands like Gel and Scowl are really popular groups in the punk scene, but I agree that it ebbs and flows. 

TROXELL: Yeah, because we're still describing those bands like, “Oh, isn't this exciting because Scowl is getting big and they have a woman.” It’s like you said, it's 2025. Is that really a thing to be excited about? Let's just start describing bands by their music and if you like the music or not. What if we started describing bands by saying they’re all blonde? That would be crazy. Like, what’s your point? There's a lot of anger on it, but I do try to just make fun of it in the hopes that it'll just seem so ridiculous that we'll stop doing it. 

UPTIGHT: That leads into my next question. As something that you kind of have to deal with all the time, is humor your main way to deal with those obstacles that you might face in the industry? 

TROXELL: Yeah, I think mocking somebody that doesn't see you as a person is the best way to get them. If you're just this angry person screaming, you're just the angry person screaming. You only get so far, but I think you get farther with staying calm, being polite and just roasting someone. 

It's hard when you're put in some situations. Like just recently–I won't say what club it was–we were on a big stage and I asked for reverb and they told me I didn't need it. I was like, “Cool. Awesome. You know what I want more than I know what I want. Thanks so much.” And it's tough because then you're dependent on people in the industry. I'm dependent on this sound guy to make me sound good, but now I've pissed him off. 

I'm very confrontational, maybe problematically sometimes, but like I said I'm in my 40s. I'm tired of being quiet, tired of saying it's okay and it's not okay. It's not alright to be treated differently when you're a woman. Even my husband [Patrick], it'll shock him to see it happen. And I'm like, that's just a little tiny microdose of what happens on a constant basis and little things every day of not being taken seriously and having to prove yourself over and over again as somebody that belongs at the party. 

I feel like people really responded to that on the album. It wasn't something I set out purposefully to do, like, “Let me write a record about the patriarchy,” but it came out and people seem to have had it resonate within them. All sorts of folks, not just women. 

UPTIGHT: You say you didn't really plan to make that a very central theme on that album. Is that always going to be an underlying theme in your work, or is that just something you were expressing maybe just for this record? 

TROXELL: When I write I draw from my personal experience, so maybe yes maybe no. I write about what's happening to me, because I don't want to preach at anybody. I don't want to tell people what their experience is, so I just try to draw from what I know is true for myself so that I know I believe in it and that it's real. 

I was in a shoegaze band for 10 years and a lot of the same issues were addressed. I wasn't screaming them, I was singing them, but they were on a lot of the same issues over feeling like you’re not always being taken seriously and wanting to be taken seriously. I wrote a song for that band called “The Yellow Wallpaper”–I don't know if you know that short story by Charlotte Gilbert–and it turned out to be one of our biggest songs because people got it. I think that taught me there is an audience out there that will resonate with this and who are wanting to just be taken seriously. 

UPTIGHT: I feel like the more specific songwriting is, the more people can relate to it. Which you think is kind of backward, but that's definitely something I've found. 

TROXELL: Yeah. I went to art school and something I learned in art school was that you don't want to be vague. You can be mysterious or ambiguous, but you never want to be vague. So the more I try to be as specific as possible I find that people relate to it, whereas if I write something that's so vague, it's like, is that real? I think people relate to the authenticity. 

UPTIGHT: For sure. I did want to ask about some specific songs on the album; one of my favorites is definitely “Candy Apple Baseball.” I had read that you said the song was partially inspired by Charli XCX and Brat, or at least it exists in that same universe. How do other music genres influence the music that you do?

TROXELL: I think all of us in Mugger pull from really a wide range of influences. We might not fit the exact hardcore mold that's happening right now. Like Daniel was in Radioactivity, so he pulls from a lot of other genres. He loves Britpop. If you listen to the guitar stuff on Mugger, it's not typical hardcore chugs. There are all kinds of wacky stuff that he throws in there that I think is amazing. Lisa was in a doom metal band, so she has that background. 

I always tell people when they ask my influence that it's always pop influences. Because I'm a performer. I might not be the best singer, I might not be the best musician, but I know that I am a performer, so I look at pop artists and how they are able to command a room. I'm looking at Charli XCX and I'm like, I want to do that but in hardcore. 

I didn't know about Brat when I wrote “Candy Apple Baseball,” but instantly I was like, “‘Candy Apple Baseball’ is brat.” It exists in this world because it's the definition of me being tongue in cheek, making fun of you for thinking if something like the color pink is girly or not. I just wanted to do something that was really silly but also really powerful. 

UPTIGHT: When you tell people in the punk scene that you're inspired by different pop performers, how is that received?  

TROXELL: There are certain people that are never going to see me as knowing the right people to say I'm influenced by. They want me to name all the right hardcore bands and I’m like, “If that's what you're looking for I’m just never going to fit what you want.” Then there's other people that totally get it. I'm very energetic. I move around a lot. I try to have an aesthetic about what I do, so I think it makes sense for a lot of people. But then for some people, they're just never going to get it. 

UPTIGHT: Switching gears a little bit, I did want to ask about the song “101” on the album. You had said it's more of a love song, and you wanted to have this soft tone to it. How do you bring in softness to such a brutal musicality? 

TROXELL: I always want to lean on my femininity. I don't want to hide it just to fit in. I won't speak for anyone else, but I will find that sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to act tough or strong or aggressive to be a frontperson in a hardcore band. That's not who I am. I am a very aggressive person, but I'm very soft too and I really lean into my femininity and that's a very important part of how I identify. I like that now I've been able to figure out how to still be really soft, but also strong. Just because I'm soft doesn't mean I'm weak. 

I loved “101” once I heard it. It has this sort of fierceness to it. It starts right off and people are instantly banging their head. Something I thought would always be funny from the beginning of Mugger is if I write lyrics that are catchy enough that people are singing along, but they don't know it's a love song to my husband. I think that's kind of funny and cool to do at the same time. I don't think there's any limit on the things that anybody can write about in a punk song, and they shouldn't be afraid to write a love song. 

UPTIGHT: On the album you talk about a wide variety of different things and some of the things you talked about are very vulnerable, namely addiction and things like that. Is that something that's ever made you nervous? Putting your most personal feelings out into the universe? 

TROXELL: Not anymore. Like I said, with age you stop caring about what other people think. Secrets only have power when they're secrets. The more we talk about them, the less power they have and the less we should be afraid to talk about secrets and addiction and things like that. 

I had an eating disorder in my early 20s and it was hell on earth. It was really terrible, and I didn't have anybody to talk to about it and I didn't see anyone else talking about it. 

This was in the early 2000s and social media was not what it is now, but I think it would have been really helpful to have to hear people be like, “I went through this, I got through it, I got better.” To not have any voice saying that made me struggle in silence a lot longer. So I think part of what I want to do is I always want to make people not feel alone. Other people have gone through this so we can get through this. And I've always channeled my vulnerabilities through my artwork, whether that was painting or photography or music. Like I said, I think people respond to authenticity, so that makes it beneficial too. 

UPTIGHT: It's very important to talk about things like mental health and I’m so glad you do it in your work. The song “Dead Friends” off Luck Forever specifically talks about people that you've lost to addiction. Going off of “Dead Friends” specifically, when it comes to emotions like anger or grief from losing somebody, how does writing a song or expressing yourself through art help you channel those emotions? 

TROXELL: Writing has always been a relief for me. Since I was a kid I've always written, and writing has always made me feel like I can do something. I can put the emotions somewhere. 

With “Dead Friends,” I and everyone in my group have so many friends that we've lost to addiction and have it become so overwhelming where you just feel like, “What can I do to stop this or help me with my feelings, while also helping other people that might be going through that as well?” I find all I can do is remember them. The reason I miss them so much is because I love them so much. That's the only way to make it feel any better. 

Someone specifically that I thought about when writing that album was someone that I was in inpatient care with for my eating disorder. She died six months after we got out. Six months, and we were mirror images of each other. It's just so awful to have seen someone die that didn't have to die, but because we don't talk about mental health and we stigmatize addiction, these deaths will continue to happen until we can get to a point where people can ask for help at a stage where they can get it. I think we pretend that we're not allowed to ask for help until we're on death's door. If we talked about it and people felt comfortable as soon as things got hairy, it would be so much easier. 

UPTIGHT: What advice do you have for people who are angry at having lost someone, or maybe even angry because of the patriarchy or their political system? What advice do you have for your listeners or anybody feeling this way? 

TROXELL: I would just say to use your anger. Don't get consumed by it. It's easy to feel completely overwhelmed by anger because there's a lot of awful things happening in the world right now. The best way to use your anger is to fuel you. Focus on what you can do. Surround yourself with the people that you think are good people and use that anger to make meaningful decisions that impact you. 

Support people. Support the people you think are cool and right and say the things that resonate with you by going to their shows or buying their art or going to their poetry reading. Since I understand anger, you should keep it. Don't reject it and try to squash it, but don't let it make you so angry that you're jaded and you think there's nothing good out there left or there's no point to trying because it's just not true. That’s a trap you could fall in. Don't let it eat you up but use it to fuel you. 

Stream Luck Forever on Spotify and Apple Music.

Keep up with Mugger on Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Bandcamp.