List of True Emo Bands
Rites of Spring
Embrace (US band, not the UK brit-pop band)
Gray Matter
Ignition
Dag Nasty
Monsula
Fugazi
Fuel
Samiam
Jawbreaker
Hot Water Music
Elliot
Friction
Soulside
Lifetime
Split Lip(same band as Chamberlain)
Chamberlain(same band as Split Lip)
Kerosene 454
Moss Icon
The Hated
Silver Bearings
Native Nod
Merel
Hoover
Current
Indian Summer
Evergreen
Navio Forge
Still Life
Shotmaker
Policy of 3
Clikatat Ikatowi
Maximillian Colby
Noneleftstanding
Embassy
Ordination of Aaron
Floodgate
Four Hundred Years
Frail
Lincoln
Julia
Shroomunion
Unwound
Heroin
Antioch Arrow
Mohinder
Honeywell
Reach Out
Portaits of Past
Assfactor 4
Second Story Window
End of the Line
Angel Hair
Swing Kids
Three Studies for a Crucifixion
John Henry West
Guyver-1
Palatka
Coleman
Iconoclast
Sunny Day Real Estate
Christie Front Drive
Promise Ring
Mineral
Boys Life
Sideshow
Get-Up Kids
Braid
Cap'n Jazz
Funeral Diner
Circle Takes The Square
A Day in Black and White
A Trillion Barnacle Lapse
Air Conditioning
Amanda Woodward
Breather Resist
Coliseum
Envy
Gospel
Hot Cross
Kaospilot
Lack
Melt Banana
Mikoto
Newgenics
North of America
Off Minor
Gun Metal Gray
Saetia
I Hate Myself
I Would Set Myself On Fire For You
City Of Caterpillar
The Kodan Armada
Raein

Go debate in the Rap topic and defend yourself. >:o

f**k that im not gonna go into the rap thread and get ganged up on by a bunch of idiots who don't even know or prolly even respect the genre.... f**k emo, there would never be as much press on an emo band-member gettin shot and killed like there are rappers, as much as ppl say rap sucks rap sells right now and your favorite artist is prolly influenced sumhow by hip hop

calm down.
& the reason why you don't see 'emo' band members getting shot is because they aren't out in the streets starting sh*t, or are in any way gang related. yes?

true... lemme put it this way then. no one would give a f**k if any of these emo singers died like they do rappers except for the few listeners cuz emo sucks

but, who cares if a rapper dies other than the listeners? i mean, obviously its very sad and whatnot, but beyond that, it makes no impact on anyone who wasnt a fan.

hmmm.... tupac and biggies deaths were 2 of the biggest stories in the 90's, and i GUARANTEE if eminem, ll cool j, nas, or jay-z died in the near future it would be headline news for weeks. Somehow I don't think that the same could be said if a singer in one of the lame bands posted died too. Don't get butthurt cuz no one likes emo, its just the way it is. Besides, if everyone liked emo then u guys couldnt say that youre different.

hmmm.... tupac and biggies deaths were 2 of the biggest stories in the 90's, and i GUARANTEE if eminem, ll cool j, nas, or jay-z died in the near future it would be headline news for weeks. Somehow I don't think that the same could be said if a singer in one of the lame bands posted died too. Don't get butthurt cuz no one likes emo, its just the way it is. Besides, if everyone liked emo then u guys couldnt say that youre different.

hmmm.... tupac and biggies deaths were 2 of the biggest stories in the 90's, and i GUARANTEE if eminem, ll cool j, nas, or jay-z died in the near future it would be headline news for weeks. Somehow I don't think that the same could be said if a singer in one of the lame bands posted died too. Don't get butthurt cuz no one likes emo, its just the way it is. Besides, if everyone liked emo then u guys couldnt say that youre different.

Emo is the term used for an underground movement of music in the mid-80's through the early-90's. What does emo mean? Emo is emotionally charged hardcore punk rock or "emotive hardcore". It is simply just a subgenre of hardcore.

(i stole the following from here)

"LEASE LEARN A THING OR TWO, KIDS
Before all you dumb kids go prancing around proclaiming that "OMGGG MCR R SO EMOO" or "OMMGGGZ BRITE EYZ R TEH EMO-EST EVARRR" or WHATEVER the f**k.

PLEASE learn what emo is, ENLIGHTEN yourselves, by doing one thing.

READING THIS SHORT, VERY WELL INFORMED ESSAY.

Maybe afterwards YOU'LL f**king KNOW WHAT EMO IS.




THIS ESSAY WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ME
What the f**k is emo, anyways?

"The definition of emo:

I was bored as hell the other day, and had absolutely nothing to do, so I thought to myself, “Why not write about something that means a lot to me?” I figured I would do an essay of sorts on the origins of emotive hardcore. It is somewhat biased, and opinionated, but nonetheless, I hope you’ll give it a quick read. Here it goes:

Emo is a term that is short for emotive hardcore. Most people these days think that emo is strictly short for emotional, but this is false. If emo just meant emotional, wouldn’t it encompass all musical genres, because all music has emotion in it? If you only pick one thing out of this article, be it that emo stands for emotive hardcore, not just emotional.

Many kids have the complete wrong sense of what emo is. Many earlier emo bands only released their songs on vinyl, and they were distributed minimally, so the origin of emo is lost among most people. This is my attempt at tracing it back to the start, in hopes to educate you. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of important bands and years missing, but hopefully it will give you a vague idea of how it all started out.

With that said, let’s move onto the history of emotive hardcore. Heres where the term emo came from: When Minor Threat broke up in 1983, the hardcore punk scene was getting pretty stale. In 1984, Husker Du released “Zen Arcade,” which somewhat set the blueprint for emo bands to follow. This album had the rough vocals, but it had more melody, and was a bit slower than their previous works. Many people give credit to this as the first emo album.

In the spring of 1984, a band called Rites of Spring was formed, containing members of previous hardcore bands The Untouchables/Faith and Deadline. This band kept the speed and stylings of hardcore punk rock, but the vocals were a lot more emotional, and at times even broke into a throaty moan. The lyrics also strayed from politics, and took a more emotional/profound look at life. Rites of Spring gets a lot of credit for being the first emotive hardcore band. Ian Mckaye, formerly of Minor Threat, got into a band called Embrace. Definitely different than Minor Threat, Embrace took a more emotional side to the lyrics as well, and were a lot more melodic. These bands, and much of the other bands on Dischord Records are now labeled as “The Classic DC Sound.” This was the first wave of emo bands.These bands focused more on emotion, than punk rock energy. Legend has it that while Rites of Spring, or Embrace, or Moss Icon were playing a show, someone from the crowd shouted “You’re emo!” and that’s how the term got started. The show where it happened, and which bands were playing always differ with whoever you talk to, so I have no idea how true it is. Don’t take my word on it.

From there, more and more emo bands started forming around North America. Moss Icon, which formed in 1986, started the loud/soft alternating twinkly guitar parts, and crashing distortion side of emo. Indian Summer and Native Nod, who were around 1995-96 are good examples of this, and focused more on the emotional part of the music, rather than the hardcore part, but were still hardcore. Emo was now a bit broader.
Bands like Heroin(1992), Angel Hair(1997?), and Antioch Arrow(1995?) on Gravity Records focused more on the hardcore part of the genre, but were still very emo. The music is pretty chaotic, with just enough melody to pullthings through, and the vocals are usually hoarsely screamed.

1997 marks the release of Saetias fist 7” record, and the debut of level-plane records.
I highly recommend that you pink Saetias “A retrospective” cd. At any rate, Level-plane records is probably the most famous emo label out there, and is still going strong today.
It has released many important and influential albums, and is a huge part of todays emo scene.

Some of the most important emo labels are as follows:
Dischord, www.dischord.com
Gravity, wwww.gravityrec.com
Ebullition, www.ebullition.com
31G, www.threeoneg.com
Level-plane, www.level-plane.com
Robotic Empire, www.roboticempire.com
Theres a lot more record labels out there, just take a look around the internet.
The above are just some of the ones that I enjoy.

Amanda Woodward, Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Bucket Full of Teeth, Circle Takes The Square, City of Caterpillar, Embrace, Envy, The Fiction, Heroin, Indian Summer, I Would Set Myself On Fire For You, Native Nod, Orchid, Pageninetynine, Rites of Spring, Yaphet Kotto, and You And I are some of my personal favorite emo bands.
Check them out if you’ve got the time.

Continuing on, a lot of bands are getting called emo by the mainstream, when in fact they are not. Take Dashboard Confessional for example. Chris Carraba just plays acoustic ballads. There is nothing hardcore about it. The music may be very “emotional” and heartfelt, but even so, it is not emo. The same goes for indie bands like Death Cab For Cutie, and Bright Eyes. Conor Oberst is a brilliant songwriter, and I love his work, but again, there is nothing hardcore about his music. Another common misconception about emo, is that bands like Taking Back Sunday, and My Chemical Romance are emo. To me, these bands are strictly pop punk, although their lyrics may seem very emotional at times, but emo doesn’t stand for emotional, now does it?

Another false interpretation of emo is the term “screamo.” I’m sure you’ve all heard this rant before, but I figured that I’d include it anyways. The media has used the term for bands like Thursday, and The Used. Because people call Dashboard Confessional emo, they interpret emo as “whiny watered down music for depressed kids who cut themselves.” With that as their idea of emo, it’s no wonder that people call The Used, or any other “whiny emotional band” that screams here and there “screamo.”

With emo standing for emotive hardcore, the way I see it, screamo would stand for:
Emotive hardcore + screaming, right? Wrong. Emotive hardcore contains screamed and/or whispered vocals in it already. Screamo = Emo. Just leave it at that. Even so, bands like The Used that are being labeled as “screamo” by the media aren’t emotive hardcore, so the term “screamo” is completely misused. The term “screamo” can be used for a band like orchid, although emo works just as well, but not for something like The Used.

I was talking to someone on nexopia the other day, and he was talking about screamo. I asked him what screamo is, and he replied with “any band that screams.” That is completely wrong as well. Metal bands scream. Hardcore bands scream. Punk bands scream. Hell, even Linkin Park screams. You can’t lump all of those genres into one super genre. It just doesn’t work.

Screamo is made up by the media to sell bands like The Used, Poison The Well, and such, to people who don’t know any better. As I said before, with people calling Dashboard Confessional emo, it’s no wonder that they call any band that screams “screamo.” Alas, this is false.

I first heard the term emo, when one of my friends joked “Stop being so emo, Evan.” I had no idea what emo was, so that evening, I went on the internet, and looked up the term emo, and tried to find some history on it. I was already into punk rock, and some hardcore at the time, so when I found out that emo was emotive hardcore, I was like “Wow, this stuff is pretty cool.” It really opened up my eyes to a lot of amazing music.
Emo is probably one of my favorite genres out there. Why do I love emo so much? Pure effing passion. When I actually sit down and listen to an emo record, and pay attention to nothing but the music, It’s amazing. Theres beautiful melodys duting the quiet parts of a song, and suddenly crashing distortion and chaos …theres just nothing else that compares to how much passion that emo bands put into there music. The music, and the lyrics of emo are simply some of the most beautiful and passionate stuff that I’ve ever heard. As long as emo bands keep screaming their hearts out, and keep putting out passionate music, I’ll be listening to it. "

written by Saetia at http://web6.www.nexopia.com/forumviewthrea...d=514706&page=0

im not arguing that rap is superior, i didnt mention that at all. i merely asked if ppl liked or hated emo and let u kno my distaste for it. in fact someone else brought rap into this thread so u can blame them for my rants. and jus to let whoever it was that said the biggie-tupac murders had no longevity know, biggie's mom was just rewarded a million bucks in damages by the city of los angeles for the botched handling of her son's case which happened 10 YRS AGO..... but anyways, i didnt read any of those long articles posted bout emo's real definition but regardless it is a sorry excuse for music. i dont mind good rock, jazz, reggae, or even classical at times so please dont dismiss it as ignorance this music jus sucks

hmmm.... tupac and biggies deaths were 2 of the biggest stories in the 90's, and i GUARANTEE if eminem, ll cool j, nas, or jay-z died in the near future it would be headline news for weeks. Somehow I don't think that the same could be said if a singer in one of the lame bands posted died too. Don't get butthurt cuz no one likes emo, its just the way it is. Besides, if everyone liked emo then u guys couldnt say that youre different.

emo bands, bad or not, still make up a part of the music industry. as does rap. while there are some really bad generic washed up bands, there are also some good ones. same thing goes for rap. yes, tupac and biggie were amazing rappers, i definitely have to agree with that. and their deaths were remembered for quite some time. i'll give credit to that. some rappers are good, and some are well, really bad, like 50 cent. i'm not saying that emo bands are necessarily superior to rappers, but i simply choose to approve of all genres of music. if they can get their name out there, and make at least one person like their music, then they've got to be doing something right.

and yeah, i have to agree with james. perhaps ur misjudging the longevity of how long something would appear in the news? perhaps not weeks, more like days. yes, many people listen to rap, and it's also promoted more so by mtv and the media, compared to emo bands.

and u say that u approve of "good rock," jazz, reggae, and even sometimes classical. and u claim that ur dismissing it as ignorance. well i got news for u buddy, unless if u've listened to every emo band known to mankind, which is literally impossible, seeing as how new emo bands appear every day, u can not say for 100% sure that ALL emo bands suck. u have a predisposition to say that emo bands suck, because maybe u heard some bands that u don't like. well, in that case, what do u define as emo music? and what do u consider "bad rock"?

to each his own music. don't be blindsided by ur distaste for a certain style. just respect the fact that they can get their name out there in the real world and get fans. u don't have to like them, no one's saying that u have to. but at least have the courtesy not to talk crap about them like u know enough to make a mature judgement about them.

i didnt mean "good rock" i meant good rock, good jazz, good reggae, and good classical. but its not ignorance to say i dont like emo cuz i havent heard every single band. cuz i dont like the genre. i dont have to smell every pile of sh*t to kno that it stinks. but i respect every genre, even if i dont like it. in fact, some members of the bands listed earlier prolly have more musical talent than some of the rappers i listen to, but i still dont like it. if i ever want to commit suicide then i prolly will throw sum emo on to set the mood. until then i'll keep my emo intake to the brief periods when i see them on mtv

the definition of emo is not finite. it's interpreted differently by each individual. big deal.

and james, i like you too. we should talk more.