Everyone in the emo forum has the TWIABPAIANLATD boner now, maybe I should check them out..? Also, those bands mentioned earlier are not emo bands, as the others have mentioned.

Hey first off I don't super appreciate the last comment. My one sentence contained no judgement about personality just a statement disagreeing with how you choose to group things based on sound so please don't make an assessment on my ego. I don't need it. I'm not accusing you of being an elitist, big, or clever so don't do the same to me. It's rude.

Secondly, what you're suggesting is counterproductive to the way genres actually function. The point of them is to group things according to like sonic characteristics, which is not subjective. I can objectively say that the Damned and the Ramones are similar bands. I can point towards song structure, guitar tones, the complexity of the riffs, tempo, et cetera and definitively say "these belong in the same cadre of bands" in a way that I can't argue that the Ramones and Miles Davis do.

So if you want to keep calling Flyleaf screamo go ahead but people are going to call you out on it (including me) and whether you cry about it being "elitist" or not. You're completely ignoring large aspects of music history as well as articles in this forum that have shaped the emo discussion here for years.

In the meanwhile I'm going to suggest he/she listen to....

Sunny Day Real Estate


American Football

lots of cool stuff in here. with the whole debate thing, sorry if these aren't eligible

Those are all tops emo bands, dunno why you would think they're ineligible.

i'm terrible with the whole genre labeling thing



this whole ep's nice

I'm not deliberately ignoring anything - in fact, I took care to point out that the genre definition is actually very broad and ambiguous, and that my own interpretation of the label [and the question] was subjective.

Do I think that Flyleaf is the best possible example of a "screamo" band? No, of course not. However, they are certainly a band with emo/ post-hardcore influences, and the singer does occasionally scream. Since the singer is also female, and there are far fewer women vocalists than there ought to be in this genre, I included them in the list.

I'd like to point out, however, that I've received responses similar to yours [in similar situations] regarding very different sounding bands. For example, some people would call bands/artists like Taking Back Sunday, Death Cab For Cutie, Dashboard Confessional, and Brand New emo - using the term to apply to softer, more indie/ acoustic/ pop-punk influenced music. Some people would call bands like Funeral For A Friend, Bullet For My Valentine, or even Killswitch Engage emo - using the term to apply to anything remotely post-hardcore or metalcore. Yet more people apply the term to any pop-punk band with a floppy fringe.

The borders are further blurred by the fact that many modern bands combine "emo" vocals with pop punk hooks and metal-core/ post-hardcore riffs and breakdowns.

Therefore, you can understand why I don't believe the genre has a precise definition any more.

Now, personally, I don't have a problem with that - I love music that blends genres, and I love music of many different genres. I'm generally far less concerned with defining precisely what category a band or a song falls into than I'm concerned simply by how much I like said band or song. Hopefully, the majority of people feel the same way.

If the person asking didn't like the bands/songs I suggested, then that's fair enough, but I think it's rather poor to imply that my suggestions are somehow a disservice, since a. they were merely *suggestions* that could freely be ignored if disliked, and b. as aforementioned, the genre is extremely loosely defined.

I apologise if I have inaccurately accused you of elitism. Because I enjoy lots of different genres and I'm not too pedantic about how I label it, I have frequently experienced people complaining at me: "oh, that band's not really industrial, it's industrial metal... no, that's not simply ska, it's third wave ska-punk...." etc. You get the drift. This pisses me off because the inference seems to be that being narrow-minded is somehow indicative of superiority, when of course it's anything but. So, I am sorry. Elitists are a pet hate of mine, and I may have unfairly projected some of that resentment onto you.

I suppose I assumed that a forum entitled "Hardcore & Emo" would probably concern most connected /influenced genres as well. Perhaps that presumption was inaccurate.

The lines aren't blurry. The people who call the bands you listed emo can call any band emo or any other genre- that doesn't mean they're correct. There's an entire culture of people associated with emo and screamo with values that started with 80s hardcore. The bands you listed have nothing to do with that culture. They don't share those values. Those values, along with the music, are what define a band as emo, screamo, hardcore, punk, whatever. It's not about being condescending or elitist, it's about filtering out the listeners who share those values from those who don't. How would you feel if you invested your life into a culture that has no "real world value" and then people who thought you sounded and looked "cool" copped your style and assimilated it to turn a profit? To add insult to injury, what if that culture became the subject of constant parody based completely on people's ignorant and inaccurate perceptions and depictions? How would you feel then?

When genres/sub-genres begin they are usually very loosely defined. See Post-Rock for a really good example, it was first used to label bands like Stereolab, Seefeel, and Pram to name a few. None of the mentioned bands resemble any contemporary post-rock groups like GY!BE, God is an Astronaut, Mogwai, and EITS. I'm not sure if I really think of modern post-rock, most new bands in the genre try to sound like Godspeed!, but at least the genre isn't scrutinized by the general public for stupid reasons.

ps. +1 for American Football.

I've always had a boner for them, they're pretty great.