QUICK HITS: EMO ICEBERG, PART 2

As some of you may remember, back in December I did a little response to my colleague Miranda Reinert’s coverage of the first 2 tiers of the_emo_encyclopedia’s emo iceberg, which kind of helped me to flex my muscles in the Flippant Snark areas of my writing. It is now 4 months later and although Miranda has yet to cover any of the subsequent tiers, I’m suffering from a bit of writer’s block this week and thought it might be fun to rip through tier 3. We’re starting to get into some of the more aggressively obscure picks, which means there is a lot of “so-and-so was also in” Discogs rabbit holes for us to go down. You ready? Me too.

The top of the Knowledgeable tier kicks off with a collection of moderately popular/well-known screamo bands like Sed Non Satiata and Welcome the Plague Year (the latter of which is one of my favorite of the early 2000s “very heavy emoviolence” wave of bands— see also Love Lost But Not Forgotten). Ampere is here; their debut album, All Our Tomorrows End Today, is a shade under 11 minutes long and is one of my favorite screamo releases of all time. Just under Ampere is Hot Cross, which is a post-Saetia project that in my opinion deserves to be a little higher not only because they are excellent but also because they ended up putting out their final album Risk Revival (a very adventurous album that kind of splits the difference between early-2000s screamo and mid-2000s The Fall of Troy-esque noodly post-hardcore) on the esteemed label Equal Vision.

There are quite a few “achingly melodic screamo” skramcave-core bands here, like Daïtro, La Quiete, Beau Navire (not to be confused with Bon Iver), and Sinaloa, along with some relatively popular newer screamo bands like Frail Hands, Overo, State Faults, and Ostraca, who are (justifiably) critically acclaimed. I don’t have a lot to say about these bands, principally because they are all talked about quite a lot in the context of the modern screamo scene, either due to their current popularity or due to their long-lasting influence (and the fact that these bands were brave enough to be active in an extremely niche subgenre during a period of time when no one really cared about said niche aside from me and Jeremy Bolm).

I appreciate that the post-Mineral band the Gloria Record is here, although it begs the question as to why the other Mineral-adjacent bands who were mining a similar post-rock-tinged sound like Pop Unknown and Imbroco were also not mentioned, let alone other “members of” bands like the post-Knapsack band the Jealous Sound or even the very popular post-Braid band Hey Mercedes. C’est la vie.

There are also a lot of very classic screamo bands here that were very often among the first names mentioned back when I was first digging into them (long after they had initially broken up, of course). I’m talking specifically about the hyper-political, hyper-melodic Gilman Street screamo mainstays Yaphet Kotto (whose namesake unfortunately passed away recently), Joshua Fit for Battle (a fantastic emoviolence band that is perhaps best known for ending their LP with a joint parody of Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and Pearl Jam’s “Evenflow”), Majority Rule (who often get sidelined as “that band that did a split with pg99” but whose album Interviews with David Frost is one of the absolute heaviest screamo records ever committed to tape), Neil Perry (who deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Saetia, Orchid, and Jeromes Dream imo), and Kidcrash (whose album Jokes you might hear mentioned as the pinnacle of jazzy twinkle/screamo fusion).

I’d also specifically like to give props for the mention of Amanda Woodward (a very good French screamo band who picked up where the pioneers of the ultra-catchy-yet-volatile-and-vulnerable French style like Anomie, Weep, and Finger Print left off) as well as Combatwoundedveteran, who are one of the most unhinged-sounding bands of all time. Their most famous album, I Know A Girl Who Develops Crime Scene Photos, is a frenetic and disturbing mixture of harsh noise, powerviolence, screamo, grind, and unclassifiable what-the-fuck-itude.

It is a crime that You & I are down this low, considering they might have done more than any band other than Saetia to codify what would come to be known as the straightforward screamo sound, although fellow screamo-definers Honeywell (whose split with Reach Out is one of the single best records to ever come out of the Bay Area, along with the collected discography of tier-mates Mohinder) are also in tier 3, so this is probably less about historical importance and more about accessibility? Then again, the ordering of this tier list is utterly illogical anyway (remember, this is the same tier list that considers Brand New and Orchid to be a similar level of well-known).

The other main pocket of bands here are classic 90s “Proper Emotive Hardcore” bands, most of whom I love to gush about at any and every opportunity. For example, Native Nod is here (which is weird, because Chris Leo’s other, arguably less-recognized band the Van Pelt was on a higher tier), as is Michigan’s Current, who are one of the best of the tightly-wound, three-minute pop-hardcore peddlers from the early 90s. There’s also Florida’s Don Martin Three (who are a seminal influence on recent emo twitter favs Home Is Where), Embassy, Breakwater, Anasarca (who were the subject of a pitifully horrible Pitchfork review that referred to them as metal), Evergreen (presumably the superior Louisville band), Boilermaker (who performed a more grunge-tinged brand of churning post-hardcore-ish emo) and Falling Forward, who would go on to become much more notable when they mutated into Elliott (although, as much as I love Elliott, I have to admit that Falling Forward’s Hand Me Down is better than anything they ever did— an incredible slice of emo that splits the difference between aching, vocal-propelled melody and mid-90s Revelation Records-style hardcore in a way that many bands aspired to but few could match).

The more I look at tier 3 the more I think it might be my favorite collection of bands in this entire tier list. There’s the whispery jangles of 123 Rue Montmartre (although I wonder if this is another token-female-vocals inclusion, not enough people talk about this band so I appreciate them being here anyway), the violent Euro-skramz of Tristan Tzara, Rain (who are an actual mid-90s emotive hardcore band not to be confused with popular screamo act Raein), Bob Tilton (one of the premier UK emo bands of the 90s, a scene that is criminally overlooked today), Father Figure (a great screamo band which has members in common with Two Knights and Flesh Born), and Ethel Meserve, one of the bands you could most credit with bringing significant math rock influence to emo (and a big part of the DNA of Saetia and, to an even greater degree, Off Minor, along with the previously-mentioned Anasarca).

The Hated, who are one of the most significant post-Revolution Summer emo bands (second only to Moss Icon in influence on later acts), are also here. There’s also some decent Delaware representation between Boysetsfire and Eldritch Anisette (one of the most criminally underrated emocore bands of all time).

The two biggest sonic outliers here, in my opinion, are Boy Problems (who are a Philly twinkle-screamo band that shares a lot more DNA with tier 2) and Calm, who are not really an emo band at all. Honestly, they sound like a lo-fi, more hardcore-adjacent take on the first couple Smashing Pumpkins records. But they share members with Indian Summer as well as Mohinder, which means that they are actually a huge stepping stone to the sublime slowcore beauty of Duster (if you didn’t know that Duster are ex-Mohinder and thus have hardcore cred, well, congrats, now you do).

Jesus Christ, that was actually a nightmarishly complicated journey. I was going to go through tier 4 as well but about halfway through tier 3 I just started to feel overwhelmed and exhausted. But I’m sure you will all feel compelled to stick around when I inevitably return to this project after another 4-to-6 months. I hope everyone’s having a good week.

-xoxo, Ellie

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