emo, back in the day, was a joke term.
though i spent a lot of my time listening to these 90's "emo" bands,
alongside the hardcore and punk bands it co existed with.
sure it was standard fare for bands, especially all those pop punk/skatepunk variety to sing about teenage life, about girlfriends, falling in love and breaking up.
it was all fun. it was easy to write about.
writing about sadness and failure is also quite easier. and these mid 90's bands took it as a release.
but the joke with being depressed and suicide and all that stuff was taken too far.
now, sadly, what we all know as "emo" is a caricature of that joke. mix it up with fashionistas, a good pair of jeans, fashionable shirts, hair and guyliner...
plus the fact that the word "emo" was quite a tagline that no one quite understood, and when some bands like jimmyeatworld, texas is the reason, promise ring, jawbox, saves the day, made it big, and started to get mainstream attention, the people in the business had to put a new tag or buzzword to help it sell. and all the negative aspects just stuck.
id rather call these bands nowadays as pop metal or just plain pop. bands like underoath, saosin, or whatever band you see gracing the cover of alternative press, have become the new face of pop. they're really good. some of them gawdawful with more cliches than you can shake a stick at.
and since it sells, people are riding the wave. now go check out aiden and the likes. tama yung nag sabi na backstreetboys, or sila yung bagong boybands nowadays.
but listening to the old "emo" bands taught me the value of dynamic songwriting.
noisy lines to quiet interludes then building up to a huge sound was intrinsic in their music. very spartan guitarwork at times then some melodic riffing. lately the genre has cross-pollinated with uber tech metal riffage.
last week a band from australia named
eucalypt played three dates here in the philippines. they have been on tour for more than a month with 2 equally amazing malaysian bands, justkneeta and kias fansuri. and their style just blew me away. reminiscent of bands from ebullition records and level plane. the type of emo that never really got popular with the masses. for a lack of a better term, emoviolence was what we called it back then. despite the [gooey brown stuff] gear,and just playing straight to the amps,they had a huge wall of sound.
i think i damaged my hearing after their sets.
now i wish more bands played in that style.
i guess paengkee would approve of this, right? lol.
