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My workmates and I listen to a lot of heavy music at work in order to keep a good pace going. No use listening to The Cranberries when you're running around. We listen to a variety of new school metal that some classify as punk, and we listen to a lot of punk some would classify as emo, or screamo. From what I can tell, not a lot of Barbeloids listen to any of these bands:
Thrice, Atreyu, Avenged Sevenfold, Plain White T's, Underoath, Alexisonfire, Moneen, Hawthorne Heights, Saves The Day, Matchbook Romance, From First to Last, AFI, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, My Chemical Romance, Funeral For A Friend, Finch, From Autumn To Ashes, Silverstein, Something Corporate, The Starting Line, and lots and lots more.
These bands are notable for very aggressive, but clean guitar riffs, not gutterpunk style, very clean. There's sometimes two lead singers: a screamer and a clean singer. The screamer will choke out the verses while the singer belts out the chorus and bridge. The lyrics often deal with heartbreak and infidelity. I find the lyrics of most of these bands to be shallow, one-dimensional and rather obvious. On the flipside, some bands opt for the overly opaque lyrics about parchments and penguins (see Chiodos). Sometimes the lyrics are phenomenal, as in Thrice or AFI.
Sometimes the fashion aspect is far too important: tight girl jeans, white belt, skate-shoes, tight black t-shirt with a band logo (you must advertise another band, to help identify yourself), clean-shaven, long greasy black hair combed over an eye, a lebret or eyebrow piercing, and the earrings must be over-sized. This is for the males of the group. The influences in fashion come from The Misfits (the hair) and skate-punk fashion.
Post-punk, pop-punk, etc, fashion also has an interesting element of sexual ambiguity involved. Not only is the scene very gay-friendly, but it also invites (maybe not the best word) sexual experimentation. This is anecdotal, but I have seen straight males make out at parties and at shows. It's extremely chic to be sexually ambiguous and mysterious. A lot of emo kids will self-identify as bisexual.
The bands also use the Internet heavily to self-promote and build interest. A lot of bands no longer buy domains; rather, they create a MySpace page. The aid and culture of MySpace cannot be overstated when it comes to this genre of music. Along with PunkRockVids.com and PureVolume, MySpace has helped a lot of these bands get their fans. It's very cool within this genre for fans to discover a never before heard band (and wear their T-shirt, of course).
This new type of music has evolved from the tight eighties' metal (as opposed to dirty gutter punk) and from the emo subgenre. I wish to avoid a debate on whether or not these above bands are, in fact, emo. It doesn't matter. What does matter, is that these bands are often saddled with labels such as post-punk, pop-punk, hardcore, fashioncore, mallcore, scenesters, grindcore, gothcore, glam punk and other such words that all amount to the fact that it's no longer punk and no longer has a punk ethic (DIY, Fugazi, anti-label, etc) and tailors to a very young and very middle-class market.
For me, the highlight of those above bands is Thrice, a band often called post-punk. Their lyrics, composed by Dustin Kensrue, are mostly about spiritual, intellectual and emotional growth - opening your eyes and seeing the flaws to improve. For example, one song, The Earth Will Shake, on the new record called Vheissu, uses the chain gang songs as a metaphor for spiritual freedom:
we dream of ways to break these iron bars
we dream of black nights without moon or stars
we dream of tunnels and of sleeping guards
we dream of blackouts in the prison yard
heartbroken, we found a gleam of hope
harken to the sound, a whistle blows
heaven sent reply, however small
evidence of life beyond these walls
born and bred in this machine
wardens dread to see us dream
we hold tight to legends of
real life, the way it was before
we dream of jailers throwing down their arms
we dream of open gates and no alarms
look to the day the earth will shake
these weathered walls will fall away
More literary posters will see that the album title, Vheissu, comes from Thomaas Pynchon's V.. There's a decent anecdote about Thrice that I heard. My friend was at this party after the Warped Tour and Thrice and some other bands showed up. For most of the evening, Thrice sat in a corner by themselves. Finally, they stood up and informed the host that they were leaving to go read some sci-fi novels. A glance at the recommendations page of their website shows an avid interest in science fiction, fantasy and horror.
I'm detailing Thrice because I believe they are an excellent representation of this mostly maligned but impressive-selling genre of music. This is what's selling records in North America now. Gone are the days of NOFX, Pennywise, The Offspring, ALL, or Rancid. Now are the days of Fallout Boy, and the other million bands out there that cite Green Day as a major influence. Green Day or Guns N Roses.
Post-punk may be incorrectly attributed to these bands. As I understand it, post-punk appears to be mostly experimental, avant-garde, atonal, free-form and mostly jazz-structure inspired.
The reason why I wrote all this is because I'd like to get into a nice discussion of the future of punk-pop music and its merits. It's pop, yes, but that doesn't mean it sucks. I'd like discussion on the sexual ambiguity of emo and the fashion aspects of it.
If anybody would like some recommendations of the superior bands of this genre, I am happy to suggest. As with any large group, there's the shit, the mediocre, the best and everything in between.
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