8 Criminally Underrated Screamo Records
It’s weird to think sometimes that screamo is, like, one of the first things I ever wrote about on the Internet with an actual audience in mind. It’s always been a subgenre that I’ve really had an affinity for and kept tabs on, from the time I first started getting really into DIY music, to that moment in 2016/2017 or so when it started to feel like it was reaching a new boiling point in popularity, to now, when publications like BrooklynVegan are publishing very credible year-end lists extolling the virtues of this sound that, just a few short years ago, felt like the most misunderstood scene in punk.
Part of the reason that screamo has felt so misunderstood in the past is that, more than almost any other branch of punk/hardcore/DIY, it can feel aggressively granular and insular. Screamo is a scene that, for so long, was defined by its inaccessibility even in the Internet age. These were the records you could only get on Soulseek, or you only knew about if you followed the right blogs (or, g-d forbid, you were actually old enough to be around for them and score merch off Skylab). Luckily, as time has gone on and notoriety has spread— credit must be given to Jeremy Bolm, among others, for consistently championing the late 90s/early 00s Golden Age of Screamo; if it weren’t for him, for example, Saetia wouldn’t be on streaming services— it seems like it’s become easier than ever to get into these bands.
To be very clear, I think that’s awesome. It’s really cool that we now live in a world where 15-year-olds can see someone reference the Khayambii Communique or Kodan Armada or The Discord of a Forgotten Sketch and then immediately DL their entire discography + find related bands with just a few clicks on Sophie’s Floorboard. Even bands like the great Owltian Mia are getting some much-deserved, much-belated love. And it definitely feeds into the screamo scene’s historical impulse to retroactively canonize bands as legends despite the fact that it was an incredibly common occurrence for bands to only ever issue recorded material at a loss after breaking up.
Today, the screamo scene is more healthy than it’s ever been, and that rules, but part of me does miss the thrill that came with finding a totally idiosyncratic take on the sound, or stumbling across a new band that you’d never heard of despite all the members having previously been in bands you had heard of.
I want to take y’all on a little stroll down memory lane, with some of my personal favorite old screamo records that haven’t been retrospectively lionized in the same way as GOATs like Hot Cross or Love Lost But Not Forgotten. Some of these bands are luckily on Sophie’s Floorboard; others I scooped up from Soulseek or one of the myriad defunct Blogspots like Chug Life, Cut & Paste, or the absolutely god-tier This Endless Breath and Open Mind//Saturated Brain.
There’s lots of people who are even bigger screamo nerds than me and already know all of these bands; my apologies if you’re one of them. Here we go.
Carlisle- This Means Everything to Me. One of the better-known acts I’m going to mention here for sure, but I will literally always take any opportunity I can to shout-out Carlisle because their pioneering blend of pop-punk and screamo has just never really been equaled. I know there are people who use “screamo-pop” to refer to that school of early-aughts breakthrough post-hardcore, a lot of which was from New Jersey, a la Thursday and Senses Fail, but Carlisle don’t really sound anything like those bands. They’re so raw, so melodic, and such good songwriters, and I personally believe they deserve to be regarded in the same rarefied air as Rushmore-screamo bands like Orchid or Neil Perry.
Puritan- Discography. This was a Pennsylvania band that was primarily active in the late 90s. They did a split with emoviolence legends Reversal of Man, and I believe that one of the members now plays in Pissgrave, which is easily one of the heaviest death metal bands of the last ten years. This doesn’t really sound like death metal, but it is fucked-up and weird in that special late 90s PA way— an extremely noisy blend of sludge metal with screamo that is sometimes accidentally powerviolence and other times is just transcendentally atmospheric, heavy, and bizarre. Super-interesting, super-underrated band.
In Loving Memory…- As Years Pass and Feel Like Seconds. This band was from famous screamo hotspot Des Moines, Iowa. They shared a member with the slightly sassier, marginally more obscure Rue Morgue and did a split with only slightly-less-underrated screamo band Examination of the… They have a mostly-complete discography that was assembled by Init Records— a record label whose flagship band is The Spirit of Versailles, who ILM also shared a member with, and who ILM’s sound can probably most closely be compared to. Don’t be fooled, though, because this isn’t generic screamo; it sounds genuinely frantic and beset by the travails of life in a way that is distinctly turn-of-the-century-Midwestern. If you’re so inclined, you could also classify this as kittencore, since the band formed when everyone was like 16 or so.
Index for Potential Suicide- The Newest Youth Rebellion. This band also has a self-titled EP and a split with Usurp Synapse (who is probably their closest comparison in terms of their twisted sense of humor and their pummeling, unforgiving brand of overbearing screamo), but I think this, their sole full-length, is probably their strongest material, although you can easily scoop up their entire discography in the form of a collection entitled Sex, Violence, Whatever.
Tipping Canoe- self-titled. This band is from Massachusetts and I have heard accusations that Jeromes Dream ripped off their demo? I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of this claim (and I might be confusing it with something else entirely to boot), but I can confirm that this eponymous LP is one of the most unique screamo records I’ve ever heard, striking an elegant balance between the more conventional, alt-rock-styled screamo of, say, Malady and the sassier, more chaotic end of the spectrum. (Dave from OMSB compared them to a “what could have been” version of early Rye Coalition, and that seems accurate to me as well.)
Life Is A Fight- self-titled. I have no idea where I first heard about this obscure band from Atlanta, but it was definitely in the context of “No Rest for Endimion” being an all-time classic of the genre. This band existed during that weird mid-aughts era where there was a preponderance of great bands that are well-regarded now but as late as 2014 or so were criminally overlooked (Cobra Kai, Cease Upon the Capitol, Textbook Traitors, Deers!, A Day In Black and White, Cowboys Became Folk Heroes, etc), and unfortunately, this band never seemed to transcend that limitation, but they certainly deserved to.
Noisy Sins of the Insect- Discography. This absolute honker of a band is from Constantinople Istanbul, played a total of 9 shows, and during their lifetime only distributed their recorded material on a CD-R. Totally noisy, aggressive, excessive emoviolence. Back in 2020 this was given a vinyl release and a remaster by the master, Will Killingsworth, so their esteem has certainly risen since they actually existed, but I still never actually hear anyone talk about them.
Echelons- The Morning Sun & The End of the World. Last but not least, I wanted to cap this off with a relatively recent screamo record from Austria that I think deserves to be in the same conversations as like, Lord Snow and the rest of the mid-2010s New Screamo Canon. Before changing their name this band was originally known as Unable to Fully Embrace This Happiness, which might be the best screamo band name of all time. This album was recorded, according to their Bandcamp, using a webcam and a dictaphone, and was inspired by the work of Inio Asano (a manga artist best known for the non-linear psychological horror Nijigahara Holograph and the emotionally devastating serial drama Goodnight Punpun). You can tell both of these things immediately. This is one of the rawest, most genuinely distressed-sounding records I’ve ever heard in my life and I cannot recommend it or its bad vibes more highly.
-xoxo, Ellie
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