Modern emo, emo prog and stuff

[DarkAxel]

Inspired by a mention in the Be(a)st of 2015 thread

What the fuck is emo-prog

Something we're all better of pretending never happened.

(and I'm not sure actually happened outside of those half page articles in the front pages of guitar magazines).

Oh, it happened

Now... I legit feel like having this discussion.

I presume we're talking about bands like The Dear Hunter, The Sound Of Animals Fighting, Circa Survive and such? Probably The Receiving End of Sirens as well as it sounds like Underoath, Circa Survive and Moving Mountains combined. In the best way possible.

i mean it does make sense because those could be what constitutes emo-ish music... but it's that weird thing when emo stopped being a scene and a lifestyle and it started to be just a musical feature, so bands like Manchester Orchestra can be emo as fuck and still look like your normal post-hardcore beard-dudes?

and The Dear Hunter actually does remind me of say... Fall Out Boy or Panic at the Disco at times. Those theatrical, cabaret vocals, you know what I mean?

just for the record, I enjoy the bands mentioned. Out of those The Dear Hunter obviously the most, but I love The Sound Of Animals Fighting and Circa Survive I just never knew I actually liked emo, because these bands started to be labeled "post-hardcore", probably to avoid the negative connotations of the "emo" moniker. Which I was turned-off by as well, because when the modern emo blew up (middle of 2000?) I saw the horrible bands like fucking... Alesana. And I never got into My Chemical Romance because I couldn't get over Gerard's voice (still having trouble, although I dig his solo album and it's great live as well) and the horrible, stupid drums.

Idk, a bit ranty but... let's talk these bands and resist dudes who'll come in and mock it I can like these bands as well, can't I?

[Inconuucl]

Fall of troy should be up there too. Protest the hero too, if you want to stretch the definition to hardcore punk,

But I digress, isn't technically all math rock prog emo?

[DarkAxel]

Ooh, yeah, forgot about Fall of Troy, good point definitely belongs in there I'd say.

Maybe you're right? Actually never tried to think about it seriously

[Muff_Diver]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEiuZNuIj3I[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK--LySF5nM[/youtube]

[jrmy]

But I digress, isn't technically all math rock prog emo?

If we're gonna spar over genre boundaries (a game I enjoy until I suddenly don't), I'm gonna say no - prog emo may pull influences from math rock, but math rock doesn't care about prog emo. Squares vs rectangles.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26VOfPwgM_w[/youtube]

[casecandy]

OP nails it, anything Anthony Green has been involved in, that's your reference point for what prog emo is. "Melodic post-hardcore" with an emphasis on musicianship and technicality. With the requisite song suites, incomprehensible lyrics, etc. IMO:

Key bands of prog emo: Fall of Troy, Circa Survive, tSoAF, tREoS, Dear Hunter, Coheed, Gatsbys American Dream (sometimes)
Related bands: Thrice (late career), Thursday (late career), MCR (late career), Forgive Durden, Saosin (early career), Mars Volta

The Dear Hunter actually does remind me of say... Fall Out Boy or Panic at the Disco at times. Those theatrical, cabaret vocals, you know what I mean?

Yupp, Patrick Stump's voice has been imitated and built upon ever since the 2003 release of Take This To Your Grave. Panic! was the first band to do it but by no means the last. Listening to Casey's voice, Tom Dutton's voice in Forgive Durden, Nic Newsham in Gatsbys, even Bruno Mars, all owe a lot to Patrick

Fun fact: Brandon Boyd of Incubus has been ripped off even more thoroughly. So many vaguely heavy rock acts are basically Incubus tribute bands. Alesana included! Second-rate Brandon Boyd

[casecandy]

Pro tip: nobody knows what emo is.

It has always been a loaded word and no band actually wants to be called emo.

Proof it's always been a loaded word: a video of Ian MacKaye calling emocore stupid in the year of my birth, 1986.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdh0Qm_5A0[/youtube]

There's a crowd who say emo is only '80s and early '90s emo and the buck stops there, but given the growth of the genre and its cultural cache (you can now use the word "emo" quite readily to describe an overly emotional person), that's pretty myopic.

To some people "emo" is mid-'90s Midwest emo; to some it's early 2000s Long Island/NJ/FL Vagrant/Victory records type stuff; I don't think many people who really love the music you're describing in OP think of it as emo, but they're definitely sharing the same scene.

So people will use euphemisms like "melodic post-hardcore," "pop-punk," "post-rock," etc.

But unless you're a remarkably tenacious pedant, you know emo when you see it.

eg. Explosions In The Sky and Moving Mountains are billed as post-rock... but come on, who you fooling, you did the fucking Friday Nights Lights OST.

Protest the Hero are metalcore but... are they really metalcore in the same way that Hogan's Heroes or Earth Crisis are metalcore?

In the same manner, all those post-hardcore and prog bands you mentioned can be emo. Just like My Chemical Romance, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and The Bled can all be emo... despite having no sonic characteristics in common beside the proliferance of electric guitars.

I have always thought of emo as way more of a scene and shared fanbase and a bunch of kids with the same sort of lifestyle than I have a genre.

I think we can all agree Alesana suck donkey balls.

[D.o.S.]

. Just like My Chemical Romance, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and The Bled can all be emo... despite having no sonic characteristics in common beside the proliferance of electric guitars

And suckitude.

[casecandy]

. Just like My Chemical Romance, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and The Bled can all be emo... despite having no sonic characteristics in common beside the proliferance of electric guitars

And suckitude.

LOL

Of those bands I like all of them except The Bled. We can mutually agree that The Bled suck.

*whispers* Are we counting when we agree on things or just when we like the same things?

[D.o.S.]

both. I don't think I've actually heard the bled but I am confident in my assessment.

I agree with you, though, that there's definitely a common thread between all those bands that doesn't have a lot to do with sonics (or my distaste).

[casecandy]

both. I don't think I've actually heard the bled but I am confident in my assessment.

I agree with you, though, that there's definitely a common thread between all those bands that doesn't have a lot to do with sonics (or my distaste).

+1 to all of this

Yeah, it's a scene thing. Think of all the bands you think of as maybe being emo as being "scene" instead... and it starts to make a lot more sense in your head.

Nobody can like ALL the different bands under this umbrella. So there's people like you who are picky as shit and basically only think At the Drive-In is good, and then there's people like me who like the vast majority of it, and neither is right or wrong, really. I think we would both agree that most of the bands from the Victory/Vagrant era, circa 2000-2004-ish, were complete shit. The word "bandwagon" goes a long way to explaining that.

Where we'd differ is, I think the biggest bands from that era were categorically not shit. The flagship Victory bands like TBS and Thursday, and the flagship Vagrant bands like Dashboard, Get Up Kids, and STD, were some of my favourites from any era.

[D.o.S.]

potentially. when I read the phrase "prog emo" I think of Minus the Bear.

[casecandy]

potentially. when I read the phrase "prog emo" I think of Minus the Bear.

Yes! I can't believe I forgot them. They are the perfect example of what I'm talking about, a "scene" band. I mean, they're not an emo band. There is no reason to assume they're an emo band. And yet they were totally... kindof... an emo band. Circa 2007/2008 especially, they were everywhere after Planet of Ice came out

[D.o.S.]

slanty haircut babes love minus the bear.

[casecandy]

sonics

Once I looked at all the bands we're talking about in this thread and I could only come up with a short list of purely musical common denominators.

1. The use of guitars as the primary instrument
2. The use of octave chords
3. Whiny, nasal, or flat vocals; strained vocals

slanty haircut babes love minus the bear.

For true, though