Good emo-type bands

[Mattman]

I never really liked emo back in high school, but in the last while I've really gotten into certain bands that are sort of emo.  Funeral For a Friend are one of the best bands out there right now; they've got some really great riffs (what else would you expect from a band that regularly opens for Iron Maiden?).  If you haven't heard it, download "Juneau".  Apparently their genre is called "post-hardcore", but the lyrics are definitely emo.  But like I said, they still rock hard.

Another pseudo-emo band that I really like is Story of the Year.  "Until the Day I Die" is one hell of a rock anthem, and the band as a whole writes some really great songs.

Overall I'm just starting to appreciate more of this kind of music.  The bands I listed rock harder and are less stereotypically "emo" than bands like Taking Back Sunday.  They have some really interesting guitar parts and they really put energy into their live shows.

Does anybody else know any "good" emo bands?

[mrlee]

emo. And good cannot be put in the same sentence.

[gilld1]

The only good emo band is one that no longer exists!

[mrlee]

The only good emo band is one that no longer exists!

good man 

[Neemo]

what the fuck is an "emo-type band"

[Hammy]

what the fuck is an "emo-type band"

Emo Today
In an even more expanded way than in the 90s, emo has come to encompass an extremely wide variety of bands, many of whom have very little in common. The term has become so wide-ranging that it has become nearly impossible to describe what exactly qualifies as "emo".

Correctly or not, emo has often been used to describe such bands as AFI, Alexisonfire, A Static Lullaby, Brand New, Coheed and Cambria, Fall Out Boy, Finch, From Autumn To Ashes, From First To Last, Funeral for a Friend, Hawthorne Heights, Matchbook Romance, My Chemical Romance, Silverstein, Something Corporate, Taking Back Sunday, The Starting Line, The Used, and Thrice. Fans of several of these bands have recoiled at the use of the "emo" tag, and have gone to great lengths to explain why they don't qualify as "emo". (The revulsion of some bands from the term emo is not unlike the retreat from the genre by the bands in the indie emo scene near the end of the 90s.)

In some cases, "new emo" bands are simply trying to pursue their own version of the "emo" that came before on their own terms. However, the backlash stemming from the success of a few seemingly "less emo" (and more popular in the mainstream) bands, including Dashboard Confessional and The Used, has brought an increasingly substantial pool of detractors.

In a strange twist, screamo, a sub-genre of the new emo, has found greater popularity in recent years through bands such as Thrice and Glassjaw. The term screamo, however, was used to describe an entirely different genre in the early 1990s, and the bands themselves more resemble the emo of the early 1990s. (As a reference, see Jim DeRogatis' November 2002 article about Screamo.)

As a result of the continuing shift of "emo" over the years, a serious schism has emerged between those who ascribe to particular eras of "emo". Those who were closely attached to the hardcore origins recoil when another type of music is called "emo". Many involved in the independent nature of both 80s and 90s emo are upset at the perceived hijacking of the word emo to sell a new generation of major label music. Regardless, popular culture appears to have embraced the terms of "emo" far beyond its original intentions, out of the control of the independent-minded.

[Butch Français]

good?

[Walk]

If you like emo, listen to Opeth, At The Gates, and other melodic death metal bands.  Emo rock lacks the talent and sense of aesthetics of melodic death. Punk rock is good for a few things, but emotion isn't one of them.

If you don't like melodic death, maybe you would like metalcore. Hardcore has been usurped by metalcore, which is more technically advanced and often more melodic. Listen to bands that value emotion instead of self-pity. Most so-called emo bands fall into the self-pity category; ignore them.

[Railantics]

You cant headbang to emo...handle with caution....you might get STABBED! ;-)

[BLS-Pride]

The only good emo band is one that no longer exists!

Indeed. 

[Layne Staley's Sunglasses]

The only good emo band is the one that cuts itself and dies and is never heard of again.

[J?]

Isn't Death Cab for Cutie pretty emo?

They are alright...

[Mattman]

Say what you want, but some of those bands are really talented.? I used to be totally anti-emo like you guys, thinking that it was just a bunch of guys in black t-shirts standing around playing power chords.? But after listening to Funeral for a Friend and Story of the Year, I was totally converted.? These guys have some incredible lead guitar parts with tapping and shit, and they put on a hell of a show live (hell, Funeral has opened for Iron Maiden numerous times).

If you listen to Story of the Year's second album, as well, you'll see that their lyrics are getting less emo anyway.? Almost all of the songs are huge anthems with Townshend-style youthful rebellion lyrics.? Plus, as I said, they have some unbelievable riffs.

In the end, I'd rather not listen only to older music and dismiss all new music as "talentless".? So much new music is awesome if you only give it the chance.

[Metallifuck]

If you like emo, listen to Opeth, At The Gates, and other melodic death metal bands.  Emo rock lacks the talent and sense of aesthetics of melodic death. Punk rock is good for a few things, but emotion isn't one of them.

If you don't like melodic death, maybe you would like metalcore. Hardcore has been usurped by metalcore, which is more technically advanced and often more melodic. Listen to bands that value emotion instead of self-pity. Most so-called emo bands fall into the self-pity category; ignore them.

Correct, listen to Opeth.

[axl_rose_700]

emo? and good? surely not!

[metallex78]

I found this, which is particularly amusing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEJDGLF-e18&search=emo

[Doc Emmett Brown]

The only NYTimes article I've read that makes heavy references to the Crue along with the recent embarassment for Fall Out Boy:

Skim it if you're so inclined.

The Glamour (Sigh, Whine) of Heartbreak  by Kelefah Sanneh

Thanks to a nation of enthusiastic high-school kids, emo bands are everywhere; plaintive punk has become the soundtrack of white adolescence. Thanks to a nation of enthusiastic downloaders, sexually explicit images of celebrities are everywhere, too. And last week these two trends finally collided, as Web sites began posting a series of extraordinarily revealing photographs of Pete Wentz, the bassist and lyricist for the emo band Fall Out Boy.

In one, he is merely looking soulfully at the camera. (It could be a camera phone, a device that seems to have been invented for the express purpose of humiliating celebrities.) But in the most infamous shot, Mr. Wentz is clearly overexposed. These pictures aren't just something for blog readers to snicker about. They also help capture the emergence of a new (maybe not-so-new) kind of rock star. Outspoken and insecure and glamorous (is that eyeliner?), Mr. Wentz is one of a handful of stars who represent emo's face. (And as of last week, much more.) A genre that was once mocked for its supposed earnestness is now home to some of the most flamboyant boys in rock 'n' roll.

Fall Out Boy has sold almost two million copies of its current album, "From Under the Cork Tree" (Island Def Jam); the record company celebrated by rereleasing it on Tuesday, with bonus tracks and remixes. And if any emo sex symbol is more popular than Mr. Wentz it is Gerard Way, the singer for My Chemical Romance, an even more exciting band with a similarly successful CD, "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" (Reprise/Warner), as well as a live album due out next week. Mr. Way is more theatrical than Mr. Wentz: his songs are more turbulent, and he wears enough makeup to blur the line between beauty queen and corpse. Thanks to them and dozens more, emo bands are doing something unlikely: they're reviving the fierce, fey spirit of glam rock, complete (sometimes) with eyeliner and lipstick.

This isn't the second coming of glam, though ? it's more like the third or the ninth. In "Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music" (University of Michigan Press), Philip Auslander assays the music and imagery of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry and others. He carefully (almost apologetically) notes that "glam offered no substantial challenge to the conventions of rock as a traditionally male-dominated form." And yet he shows how these heavily made-up British rock stars played with sex and sexuality without forsaking rock 'n' roll machismo.

The book doesn't follow glam to Los Angeles, where it was reborn ? tougher, meaner, straighter ? in the 1980's. For the members of M?tley Cr?e, Poison and many more, makeup and hairspray and tight pants were merely part of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, alongside alcohol and drugs and, most of all, groupies. Famously obsessed with "girls, girls, girls," these hunters dressed up like their prey.

Like Mr. Wentz, some of those 80's stars have had private moments made public. But unlike Mr. Wentz, Tommy Lee (from M?tley Cr?e) and Bret Michaels (from Poison) seemed not altogether unproud of their sudden notoriety. Then again, their situations were different from his: each was caught in bed with a curvy blonde. (The same one, in fact.)

By contrast, the Pete Wentz photographs constitute a masterpiece of emo porn. For starters, he is alone. He looks sad. And you can glimpse a record in the background: it seems to be Morrissey's ultra-melancholy single, "Everyday Is Like Sunday." When Mr. Wentz finally responded to the pictures, he did so with a fascinating note on the Fall Out Boy Web site. There was a trace of self-loathing when he wondered why anybody would want to see pictures of some "dirty boy." And instead of bragging or threatening (he says the images were stolen), he added a provocative afterthought. ("OMG! gaaah. i forgot the most important part.") He said he was upset that Chloe Dao had won the fashion reality show "Project Runway," instead of Santino Rice: "I could have understood if daniel won but her? blah."

When they're not rooting for Mr. Rice, the boys of emo are obsessed with girls, too, but not in the same way M?tley Cr?e was. The central female figure in an emo song is less likely to be a groupie than an ex-girlfriend. In an influential essay called "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't," Jessica Hopper reduced the genre to its brutal archetype. "Girls in emo songs today do not have names," she wrote, adding, "We leave bruises on boy-hearts but make no other mark." She called the genre "a high stakes game of control ? of 'winning' or 'losing' possession of the girl."

Maybe some emo bands have noticed this, too, though they have responded not by repenting but by redoubling, pushing their stylized songs toward hyperbole. They use terms like "sugar" and "honey" to underscore arch lyrics about boys who claim to hate themselves almost as much as they hate their exes. My Chemical Romance writes grand, crashing allegories full of allusions to death and violence. (The video for "Helena" shows a funeral stocked with choreographed mourners.) And Fall Out Boy's current single is "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More 'Touch Me,' " which matches its ridiculous title (and infectious tune) with hopeful and spiteful lyrics: "I don't blame you for being you/ But you can't blame me for hating it." Deliberately overripe songs like this blur the line between earnest lament and theatrical parody.

There's plenty of anxiety in performances like these: anxiety about being a boy who sings about (and, often, to) girls, as well as a related anxiety about going pop. (These songs are full of self-conscious jokes about selling out.) But if you're going to be on the main stage, you might as well act the part, as many of these singers do. Adam Lazzara, from Taking Back Sunday, is known for treating concert stages like catwalks, prancing and sashaying while singing his lovelorn lyrics.

Meanwhile, emerging bands like Panic! at the Disco (which has a charmless hit with "I Write Sins Not Tragedies") and Aiden have helped ensure that Mr. Way is no anomaly: drawing as well from goth and new wave, they seem to spend just as much time in a dressing room as the members of M?tley Cr?e did. (Although they probably find fewer creative uses for it.) And on an impressive new album called, "Heroine" (Epitaph), the members of From First to Last make a big, rousing racket, playing widescreen emo full of screaming horror stories ("Relax, baby, that's a good girl/ You're like my work of art") and suicidal fantasies ("I can't eat anything/ Without shoving my hands down my throat"). If you're wondering, the answer is yes: the lead singer, Sonny Moore, paints his face. Indeed, a recent Alternative Press story found the members sharing a M?tley Cr?e moment: taking turns "in the bus bathroom applying their stage makeup."

As Mr. Auslander concedes ? and as M?tley Cr?e energetically proved ? glam imagery needn't upend rock 'n' roll conventions. Maybe it's a mistake to take lipsticked rock stars too seriously. A few emo singers have talked about kissing guys or dating them, but that's not really the point: the genre is still ruled by avowedly straight boys singing about winning and losing girls. Still, no one can claim that these emo boys aren't putting on an enormously entertaining show. Here's hoping that, somewhere in America, a budding pop star is watching it all, and taking all of it much too seriously.

[Axlfreek]

I HATE EMO.

these dumbasses who play this shit are such amatures.

you want emotion ?
pop in november rain 

[Backslash]

Finding Emo? hehe... had to throw that one in.  But yeah, it may be difficult to find "good" emo.  Well, that's not really fair, it's a matter of opinion.  I'm not into emo, but if you are, you'd probably call it good.

[disease51883]

Isn't Death Cab for Cutie pretty emo?

I think Death Cab's probably classified as indie pop. Or "Her music. I can't believe her, man. She walked into my life, made me happy, and then took it all away in one swoop. How the fuck could she do that to me?!?"

...That's what I call it anyway.