Summer of Screamo is a month-long, weekly column spotlighting new, recent, and upcoming releases in screamo, emoviolence, and generally offbeat hardcore.For many years of my life, I’d be downright baffled when I met a person familiar with the screamo records I grew up on. The genre seemed like such a small, insular product of the area in which I lived and, since it was birthed before the internet could signal boost it to a larger audience, I assumed it stayed there. So when a stranger could reference The Now or Off Minor, it was like they spoke a secret language, like they were quoting some public access TV show that I thought no one outside my friend circle had seen.
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It’s only in hindsight that I’m coming to understand the full scope of screamo’s late 90s/early 2000s reach. It still wasn’t very expansive, but its residual influence is still being felt today. Since I started this column a few weeks ago, I’ve been getting emails from people asking me to check out their screamo band or label, and to my delightful surprise, a substantial chunk of these—I might even say the majority—are coming from outside the United States.Submissions came from all over the globe, each with its own regional personality but all rooted in the hallmarks of the genre. And with each one, I fell into a wormhole that led me to dozens and dozens of other records by a seemingly endless line of active bands. Hopefully this handful of recommendations will get you started on that path as well.So get your PayPal account ready and brace yourself for international shipping costs because we’re about to take a journey through some worldwide screamo releases…Laval, FranceI caught this French three-piece a few nights ago in New York with Portrayal of Guilt (who I mentioned in a previous edition of this column have made what is likely my favorite hardcore record this year) and they largely played material from their new, Deathwish-released album, We Already Lost the World. While the band is French, they sing in English. Or, I guess more accurately, they scream in English. The album is mainly centered around the notion of love as an act of rebellion, e.g.: “Love is defiance, defiance is necessary / Love is disobedience, love is political.” As an Extremely Online American who is constantly fed a healthy diet of unresolvable political vitriol and hateful rhetoric, I find the band’s sentiment somewhat naive, though part of me does admire their blind optimism. My own personal hate-filled bias aside, though, this is a truly powerful album rooted in sincerity, maybe to a fault. It’s one of those rare hardcore records that can be enjoyed equally by the most seasoned snob or any ol’ n00b off the street.
Birds in Row
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Entzauberung
Frail Hands
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LÖRI
Suis La Lune
Vi som älskade varandra så mycket
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Kid, Feral
Suffocate For Fuck Sake
Setsuko
Komusō
Heaven in Her Arms
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Piri Reis
Hollow Jan
Rutka Laskier
Shizune
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STORM{O}Feltre, ItalySTORM{O} also hails from Northern Italy but, unlike Shizune, they sing primarily in their native tongue. Their album from earlier this year, Ere, probably falls more on the crust side of hardcore, but has this real sinister edge to it.Putawy, PolandJesus Christ. Emoviolence in its purest form.Norwich, UKThere’s often this weird thing that happens when a distinctly American cultural product gets run through the British filter, like it loses the bombast and misplaced bravado that made it original in the first place. But Norwich’s Cassus pretty much nails the formula. On one song, “Ceaseless Tumult,” they wander off into an overly dramatic emo territory that hints that they might’ve lost the thread, but then bounce back in with a blistering assault. There are a lot of those break-neck shifts on this record which came out earlier this year.Bristol, UKThis is a fast, loud two-piece from Bristol whose Bandcamp description pins them down better than I ever could: No Gods. No Masters. No Metronomes. No Bassists.Erlangen, GermanyGermans don’t have a reputation for doing things in half-measures, and Masada’s 2016 LP is further proof of that. This album takes a lot of truly unexpected turns. It often feels like it's leading you somewhere but then never ends up in the place you thought it was headed.Finally, a great point of entry for international insights to this genre is the Miss the Stars screamo series. The prolific Berlin-based label has put out six of them now, with each featuring around two dozen bands. Some are up my alley, some are not. That’s the way samplers go, right? To each their own, etc.My favorite record store in New York—that in no way is paying me to say this—is a place called Limited To One, an East Village basement spot that traffics in rare/hard-to-find/often pricey screamo/hardcore/emo vinyl. Since I often dump my entire meager paycheck into their cash register when I’m there, the staff is usually kind enough to throw something in my bag for free. They once threw this JR Ewing record in there, thinking I’d like it. I don’t know how I missed this Norwegian band or their 2000 album at the time, but I’m making up for lost time by listening to it once a day.Dan Ozzi is on Twitter.