Emo is a music genre characterized by emotional, often confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of hardcore punk and post-hardcore from the mid-1980s Washington, D.C. hardcore scene, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore. The bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, among others, pioneered the genre. In the early-to-mid 1990s, emo was adopted and reinvented by alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, and pop-punk bands, including Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, Cap'n Jazz, and Jimmy Eat World. By the mid-1990s, Braid, the Promise Ring, and the Get Up Kids emerged from Midwest emo, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the genre. Meanwhile, screamo, a more aggressive style of emo using screamed vocals, also emerged, pioneered by the San Diego bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow. Screamo achieved mainstream success in the 2000s with bands like Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, Story of the Year, Thursday, the Used, and Underoath.
Sunny Day Real Estate is an American emo band from Seattle, Washington, formed in 1992. The band currently consists of founding members Jeremy Enigk, Dan Hoerner (guitar) and William Goldsmith (drums), alongside Greg Suran (guitar), who originally played with the band between 2000 and 2001, and Chris Jordan (bass), who joined the band in 2022. Founding bass guitarist Nate Mendel was a member of the band during three of its four incarnations.
Hawthorne Heights is an American rock band from Dayton, Ohio, formed in 2001. Originally called A Day in the Life, their lineup currently consists of JT Woodruff, Matt Ridenour, Mark McMillon, and Chris Popadak.
The Appleseed Cast is an American rock band from Lawrence, Kansas. The band was founded in the early days of emo by singer-guitarist Christopher Crisci and drummer Louie Ruiz. The Appleseed Cast has steadily evolved over the release of eight full-length albums with Crisci serving as the main songwriter. The band has a frequently rotating lineup, with Crisci being the only consistent member since their conception. Currently the band's lineup includes Christopher Crisci, Ben Kimball, Nick Fredrickson and Sean Bergman.
Jejune was an American emo band formed in 1996 at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The band has been commonly identified with the emo genre and was heavily involved with the scene at the peak of the "second wave" of emo in the mid-1990s. The three founding members, Arabella Harrison (bass/vocals), Joe Guevara (guitar/vocals) and Chris Vanacore (drums), met while studying at the college. The band relocated to San Diego, California, in 1997. They released two albums on Big Wheel Recreation and several splits before disbanding in 2000.
The White Octave was a rock band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group was founded shortly after Steve Pederson left Cursive, and was initially a trio with Lincoln Hancock and Robert Biggers before Finn Cohen was added on guitar. They released two full-length albums and appeared on several compilations before finally breaking up. The founding member, Steve Pedersen, went back to his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska to form the band Criteria. Robert Biggers and Finn Cohen went on to form The Nein. The group reunited to play in North Carolina in 2014.
Deep Elm Records is an independent record label releasing albums by bands such as Lights & Motion, The Appleseed Cast, Brandtson, The White Octave, and Planes Mistaken for Stars. It also released the compilation series The Emo Diaries.
Seven Storey Mountain is an American rock group from Phoenix, Arizona. The group's music is heavily influenced by the early Washington, D.C. post-hardcore scene.
The Blackening is the sixth studio album by American heavy metal band Machine Head. Released on March 27, 2007, in the United States, The Blackening sold 16,000 units in its first week, and became Machine Head's third highest charting release at number 54 on the Billboard 200, and charted in the Top 20 throughout many countries in the rest of the world. The Blackening has been certified silver by the BPI for sales in the UK in excess of 60,000 copies.
Sounds Like Violence are a four-piece emo/indie rock group from Ängelholm, Sweden. They are currently signed to Deep Elm Records and Burning Heart Records. Their debut album, With Blood On My Hands, was released on 12th Feb, 2007 to some critical acclaim. They previously released an EP, titled The Pistol, in 2004 and contributed songs to Deep Elm compilations including "Emo Diaries No. 10" and a "Split" EP.
Red Animal War is a rock band from Dallas, Texas that started in 1998 as Jeff Wilganoski, Jamie Shipman, Matt Pittman, and Justin Wilson. During the recording of their first album, Brian Pho replaced Jamie Shipman. Jeff Davis replaced Brian Pho in 2004, and Tony Wann came on as second drums later that year. Todd Harwell replaced Jeff Wilganoski in 2006, and after a SXSW performance the band went on indefinite hiatus. Frontman Justin Wilson has revealed the band is working on vinyl reissues and has a "full album demoed and partly recorded".
The Emo Diaries is a series of twelve compilation albums released by Deep Elm Records between 1997 and 2011. The series had an open submissions policy and featured mostly acts that were unsigned at the time of the albums' releases. Deep Elm founder John Szuch claims that the original name for the series was intended to be The Indie Rock Diaries, but this was ruled out by the fact that the first volume included Jimmy Eat World and Samiam, who were both signed to major record labels. The Emo Diaries was chosen because The Emotional Diaries was too long to fit on the album cover. Despite the title, the bands featured in the series have a diversity of sounds that do not all necessarily fit into the emo style of rock music. Andy Greenwald, in his book Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo, claims that the series "stake[s] a claim for emo as more a shared aesthetic than a genre":
[T]he bands included hail from all over the world, and the musical styles range from racing punk to droopy, noodley electro. Still, the prevalence of the series—coupled with its maudlin subtitles and manic-depressive tattoo cover art—did much to codify the word "emo" and spread it to all corners of the underground.
I Guess This Is Goodbye is the fifth installment in The Emo Diaries series of compilation albums, released October 24, 2000 by Deep Elm Records. As with all installments in the series, the label had an open submissions policy for bands to submit material for the compilation, and as a result the music does not all fit within the emo style. As with the rest of the series, I Guess This Is Goodbye features mostly unsigned bands contributing songs that were previously unreleased.
The Silence in My Heart is the sixth installment in The Emo Diaries series of compilation albums, released July 24, 2001 by Deep Elm Records. As with all installments in the series, the label had an open submissions policy for bands to submit material for the compilation, and as a result, the music does not all fit within the emo style. As with the rest of the series, The Silence in My Heart features mostly unsigned bands contributing songs that were previously unreleased.
Me Against the World is the seventh installment in The Emo Diaries series of compilation albums, released March 5, 2002 by Deep Elm Records. As with all installments in the series, the label had an open submissions policy for bands to submit material for the compilation, and as a result the music does not all fit within the emo style. As with the rest of the series, Me Against the World features mostly unsigned bands contributing songs that were previously unreleased.
The Hope I Hide Inside is the tenth installment in The Emo Diaries series of compilation albums, released April 27, 2004 by Deep Elm Records. As with all installments in the series, the label had an open submissions policy for bands to submit material for the compilation, and as a result the music does not all fit within the emo style. As with the rest of the series, The Hope I Hide Inside features mostly unsigned bands contributing songs that were previously unreleased.
Brandtson was an American rock band from Cleveland, Ohio.
The Architects of Guilt is the second full-length album by the death metal band The Famine released the February 15, 2011 via Solid State Records. It is the follow-up to their debut The Raven and the Reaping (2008).
Tabula Rasa was a post-hardcore/math rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were featured on Deep Elm’s Me Against the World: The Emo Diaries Chapter 7 and released a self-titled EP on One Day Savior Recordings as well as a full length album The Role of Smith on A-F Records.
The emo revival, or fourth wave emo, was an underground emo movement which began in the late 2000s and flourished until the mid-to-late 2010s. The movement began towards the end of the 2000s third-wave emo, with Pennsylvania-based groups such as Tigers Jaw, Algernon Cadwallader and Snowing eschewing that era's mainstream sensibilities in favor of influence from 1990s Midwest emo. Acts like Touché Amoré, La Dispute and Defeater drew from 1990s emo and especially its heavier counterparts, such as screamo and post-hardcore.
