Screamo
Screamo is a subgenre of emo that emerged in the early 1990s and emphasizes "willfully experimental dissonance and dynamics". San Diego–based bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow pioneered the genre in the early 1990s, and it was developed in the late 1990s mainly by bands from the East Coast of the United States such as Pg. 99, Orchid, Saetia, and I Hate Myself. Screamo is strongly influenced by hardcore punk and characterized by the use of screamed vocals. Lyrical themes usually include emotional pain, death, romance, and human rights. The term "screamo" has frequently been mistaken as referring to any music with screaming.
Characteristics
Screamo is a style of hardcore punk-influenced emo with screaming. Alex Henderson of AllMusic considers screamo a bridge between hardcore punk and emo, and Andrew Sacher of BrooklynVegan states the genre is "built on chaos." Screamo uses typical rock instrumentation, but is notable for its brief compositions, chaotic sounds, harmonized guitars, and screaming vocals. Screamo is characterized "by frequent shifts in tempo and dynamics and by tension-and-release catharses." Many screamo bands also incorporate ballads. According to AllMusic, screamo is "generally based in the aggressive side of the overarching punk-revival scene." Screamed vocals are used "not consistently, but as a kind of crescendo element, a sonic weapon to be trotted out when the music and lyrics reach a particular emotional pitch." Emotional singing and harsh screaming are common vocals in screamo.Screamo lyrics often feature topics such as emotional pain, breakups, romantic interest, politics, and human rights. These lyrics are usually introspective, similar to that of softer emo bands. The New York Times noted that "part of the music's appeal is its un-self-conscious acceptance of differences, respect for otherness." Some screamo bands openly demonstrate acceptance of religious, nonreligious, and straight edge lifestyles.
Many screamo bands in the 1990s saw themselves as implicitly political, and as a reaction against the turn to the right embodied by California politicians, such as Roger Hedgecock. Some groups were also unusually theoretical in inspiration: Angel Hair cited surrealist writers Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille, and Orchid lyrically name-checked French new wave icon Anna Karina, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, French philosopher Michel Foucault, and critical theory originators the Frankfurt School.
Etymology
The term screamo is a portmanteau of the words "scream" and "emo". While the genre was developing in the early 1990s, it was not initially called "screamo." The term began to be used by the mid-1990s, solely amongst the DIY hardcore scene. Chris Taylor, lead vocalist for the band Pg. 99, said "we never liked that whole screamo thing. Even during our existence, we tried to venture away from the fashion and tell people, 'Hey, this is punk. Jonathan Dee of The New York Times wrote that the term "tends to bring a scornful laugh from the bands themselves."Corruption
Following the late 1990s popularity of screamo-adjacent band the Locust, screamo began to attract the attention of people outside of hardcore, and its name was being used more broadly. During the early 2000s, the term became equally as tied to the original screamo sound, as to the more melodic, but screamo-influenced, pop screamo sound of Alexisonfire, Poison the Well and the Used. In 2003, Derek Miller, guitarist for Poison the Well, noted the term's constant differing usages and jokingly stated that it "describes a thousand different genres." In 2008, Bert McCracken, lead singer of the Used, stated that screamo is merely a term "for record companies to sell records and for record stores to categorize them."By the mid-2000s, the popularity of pop screamo had led to the word "screamo" being used loosely to describe any use of screamed vocals in music. In 2007, Juan Gabe, vocalist for the screamo band Comadre, alleged that the term "has been kind of tainted in a way, especially in the States." Quinn Villarreal of Sirius XM observed, "If a song had singing AND screaming in it, your grandmother and/or school bully probably called it screamo."
Recodification
To combat the increasingly broad-nature of "screamo", the term "skramz" began to be used to describe the original DIY definition of screamo. This term was coined jokingly by Alex Bigman of San Diego bands Seeing Means More and Fight Fair. This codification also saw the rise of the term "pop screamo", for the more mainstream derivative, as well as its synonyms "MTV screamo" and "mall screamo". Lars Gotrich of NPR Music made the following comment on the matter in 2011:History
Origins (early 1990s)
Around 1990 and 1991, a number of bands began pushing the sound of early emo into more extreme and chaotic territory. The earliest of these acts were New Jersey's Iconoclast and Merel, however the most influential acts were those from San Diego and signed to Gravity Records. In particular, Heroin are the band generally cited as either pioneering screamo or being the band that inspired the earliest acts in the genre, with other notable bands from the city, including Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow and Swing Kids. These early San Diego screamo bands were sometimes called "spock rock" by fans due to many of them dyeing their hair black and cutting straight fringes similar to the Star Trek character Spock. This, in combination with their geek-chic style of dressing would prove particularly influential on the development of the subsequent emo and scene subcultures.In New Jersey, the genre continued to grow, soon expanding into New York City. Native Nod, Rye Coalition, 1.6 Band, and Rorschach all became prominent in this scene, which was centred around ABC No Rio, while the sound expanded to elsewhere in the United States with Universal Order of Armageddon and Mohinder.
Diversification (mid–to late 1990s)
Many bands in the southern United States began pushing the early screamo sound even further sonically. Columbia, South Carolina band In/Humanity coined the term "emoviolence" to describe this sound, played by them, as well as Florida bands Palatka and the End of the Century Party. When coined, the term was a tongue in cheek portmanteau of "emo" and "powerviolence", two genre descriptions the members of In/Humanity maligned, as well as a reference to the album Emotional Violence by funk band Cameo, however as subsequent bands took influence from the sound of these groups, the term became increasingly widespread.In San Francisco, Portraits of Past were one of the earliest groups to merge the primitive screamo sound with post-rock, a combination that Funeral Diner would then continue, while also embracing the influence of black metal.
During the mid–1990s, Southern Ontario, Canada developed a populace and diverse hardcore scene. One element of this scene was bands who played music inspired by screamo, the most prominent of which were Grade, New Day Rising and Shotmaker, and based around the annual S.C.E.N.E. Music Festival. Grade had begun their career playing a style indebted to Chokehold. However, by the time of their debut album And Such Is Progress, they had departed into a style more informed by Indian Summer, Rye Coalition and Lincoln. With this change, vocalist Kyle Bishop began contrasting his screams with sung vocals inspired by James Brown, Black Francis and Bob Mould. This fusion was widely influential. Writers, including David Marchese of Spin and Michael Barclay, have credited Grade with creating screamo. While journalist Sam Southerland credited them as the first band to "seamlessly" merge screaming and singing, also stating "They occupy the same space as Refused: they did something incredibly innovative... they either get no credit because their progeny is hideous, or they’re dismissed because serious music journalists don’t pontificate about bands Alternative Press covered."
Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, Virginia developed a large and influential screamo scene: Pg. 99, who continued in the extreme and chaotic screamo sound; City of Caterpillar, who were one of the most influential early bands to merge screamo with post-rock; Majority Rule who merged the genre with metalcore; and Malady who merged post-inflected screamo with indie rock. All of which released albums which BrooklynVegan writer Andrew Sacher called essential albums in the genre. One of the most influential bands to come from the New York City screamo scene was Saetia, who formed in 1997 and created a sound influenced by math rock, jazz and Midwest emo. Following Saetia's 1999 disbandment, its members formed the similarly influential bands Off Minor and Hot Cross. Other impactful groups in the genre at this time included Jeromes Dream, Neil Perry, I Hate Myself, Reversal of Man, Yaphet Kotto and Orchid.
Mainstream crossover (2000s)
Following the release of their 2001 album Full Collapse, New Jersey's Thursday were the first screamo–influenced band to gain significant media attention. The following year, saw the release of Canada's Alexisonfire's self-titled album, which Metal Hammer writer Matt Mills called "key in legitimising the screamo sound". In the following years, the Used, Thrice, Finch and Silverstein all gained significant attention for furthering this sound. In contrast to the do-it-yourself screamo bands of the 1990s, screamo bands such as Thursday and the Used signed multi-album contracts with labels such as Island Def Jam and Reprise Records. However, this style's connection to the genre has been disputed, with some referring to it as "MTV screamo" or "pop-screamo".In the underground screamo scene, post-rock became an increasingly prominent influence amongst bands. The most prominent and influential of these acts was Richmond, Virginia's City of Caterpillar, who Vice writer Jason Heller stated "encompass era". Music critics coined the term "post-screamo" to refer to this sound. Other prominent acts making this sound at the time included Circle Takes the Square, Raein, Envy and Daïtro. Fluff Fest, held in Czechia since 2000, was in 2017 described by Bandcamp Daily as a "summer ritual" for many fans of screamo in Europe.
In Spain, bands such as Hongo, Das Plague, Ekkaia, Madame Germen and Blünt merged crust punk with elements of screamo, such as melodic minor key guitar leads, slow segues and acoustic passages. At the time, this fusion was called "emo crust". By 2002, Ekkaia and had toured with the American crust punk band Tragedy, and subsequently adopted elements of each other's styles creating the neo-crust genre.