Summer of Screamo is a month-long, weekly column spotlighting new, recent, and upcoming releases in screamo, emoviolence, and generally offbeat hardcore.Each week this month, I’ve used this column to recommend recent and worthwhile releases in the amorphous realm of screamo, grind, and oddball hardcore, and, to my genuine surprise, there has been an audience for such a thing. If I had to guess, I’d estimate that the readership for this column breaks down thusly:
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- 30 PERCENT: Cool skramz teens who come to dunk on me for not covering every single demo ever recorded.
- 40 PERCENT: Bands who want to be featured but don’t actually read it. (Please stop sending me your psych-folk Soundcloud links.)
- 29 PERCENT: Older hardcore fans who are genuinely interested in finding new music but are limited in time by the demands of day jobs.
- 1 PERCENT: My mom, who reads it so she can tell me at Thanksgiving that she doesn’t understand what I do for a living and that I should have been a notary public.
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Consolidating a decade’s worth of releases is a daunting task, as is trying to pinpoint those that define hardcore’s new canon. In any case, here is an incomplete, unofficial, just-one-jagoff’s-opinion list of essential, non-tough guy hardcore records released over the last few years.Like a drugdealer trying to rope you in with the stuff you’re already hooked on, here are a few bands that have either come back from the dead, have endured for a long time, or feature ex-members of familiar retired bands.First off, Jeromes Dream is back. The screamo veterans went the crowdfunding route to cover the costs of recording a new record at God City Studios with Kurt Ballou (their first new material in almost 20 years). Are people interested in such a thing in 2018? Well, 388 backers were willing to shell out an average of $51 to hear it, so… yes?You’re in your 30s, your white belt no longer restrains your increasingly doughy center, and you miss Orchid. I feel you. But hey, listen: Shut up for a second. Orchid is gone. They’re not coming back. A bunch of the members teamed up as Ritual Mess, though, and released this staggering LP a few years back. Instead of shelling out an exorbitant amount of money on Discogs to get the 20th color variant of the Dance Tonight! ten-inch, do yourself a favor and buy this instead.Envy. Just. Keeps. Going. The Japanese powerhouse hit their stride around their 2001 LP, All The Footprints You've Ever Left And The Fear Expecting Ahead. It was the kind of record that made you think, “Well, this is groundbreaking, but there’s no way they can possibly sustain this pace forever.” Except that they have. Their most recent effort, 2015’s Atheist’s Cornea, showcased some of the strongest songs in their catalog. Envy don’t seem to slow down with age or lessen in sonic intensity. True giants in their field.
THE PAST
Jeromes Dream
Ritual Mess - Vile Art (2014)
Envy - Atheist’s Cornea (2015)
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Failures - Decline and Fall (2014)
Horsewhip - S/T (2018)
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die Huffnung - Elegies and Creation Songs (2017)
United Nations - The Next Four Years (2014)
Head Wound City - A New Wave of Violence (2016)
THE PRESENT
State Faults - Resonate/Desperate (2013)
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Loma Prieta - Life/Less (2010)
Comadre - S/T (2013)
Jungbluth - Part Ache (2013)
Touché Amoré - …To the Beat of a Dead Horse (2009)
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Gouge Away - , Dies (2016)
Punch - PUSH/PULL (2010)
Lord Snow - Solitude (2013)
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I Hate Sex - World of Grief (2017)
La Bella - Ides (2016)
THE FUTURE
HIRS - Friends. Lovers. Favorites. (2018)
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