As I write this, I’m still reeling from finally seeing Saetia for my first time less than a week ago. And though I’m sad to say I missed Orchid’s NYC shows this year, I heard great things and I’m just glad to be living in a time in which both of those bands are playing shows again (and happy to know Orchid’s reunion is continuing into 2025). But reunited legends are not the only reasons that screamo is alive and well in 2024. There are multiple generations of screamo bands all coexisting and overlapping at once, from ’90s-era OGs to innovative new bands, and also so many different types of screamo happening at once, from bands that border on black metal to bands that border on Midwest emo. Of the many great screamo albums, EPs, and splits came out this year, I picked 15 that I think every fan of the genre should hear. Some of them also made our list of the 50 best punk albums of 2024. Also see our list of our 20 favorite hardcore albums of 2024 and our 32 favorite metal albums of 2024.
Read on for my list, in alphabetical order…
Ben Quad – Ephemera (Pure Noise)
Ben Quad turned a lot of heads in the DIY emo scene with their 2022 debut LP I’m Scared That’s All There Is, but the catalyst for their Pure Noise debut Ephemera is the standalone single they released that same year, “You’re Part of It.” The Piebald-referencing track broke from the band’s usual scrappy Midwest emo and instead embraced heavy, melodramatic screamo, and with Ephemera, Ben Quad have crafted an entire 5-song EP in that style. They take influence from the aughts-era screamo-pop of Alexisonfire and Underoath as well as heavier stuff like Deafheaven and Orchid, and they pull it off like a band that’s been doing this kind of thing all along. Combined with lyrics that take on capitalism, war crimes, and other oppressive forces, the EP packs a punch that, for my money, hits even harder than their Midwest emo stuff. With LP2 expected to arrive in 2025, it remains to be seen where Ben Quad go next, and it’s exciting to see a relatively young, new emo band that so obviously has the potential to go in multiple different directions.
Blind Girls – An Exit Exists (Persistent Vision)
One of the year’s most devastatingly impassioned screamo albums came from Australia’s Blind Girls. An Exit Exists finds the band’s screamo/mathcore chaos, black metal fury, and post-rock-infused beauty in incredible form, but what really takes the album to the next level are Sharni Brouwer’s screams. The album explores the range of emotions that come with being abused by a person you loved, and even before you dissect the lyrics, you can hear all the pain, sadness, confusion, anger, and resilience in Sharni’s voice. Few albums in 2024 felt like pure inner turmoil the way this one did.
Catalyst / Vs Self / Knumears / Party Hats – 4-Way Super Split (Larry Records)
The aging millennial in me is tempted to cringe at seeing the phrase “TikTok screamo” take off but then I remember I lived through “Myspace bands” and “Tumblr bands” so whatever, emotional music and the latest social media platform are always gonna go hand in hand. Whatever you call it, Catalyst, Vs Self, Knumears, and Party Hats are four of the best and fastest-rising bands within the newest, most defiantly-youthful wave of screamo around, and this split EP is one for the ages. Every band delivers an A+ song: Catalyst have a melodic Touché Amoré/Pianos Become the Teeth vibe, Knumears go for something a little more metallic, Vs Self are tinnier and scrappier but still so uplifting, and Party Hats toe the line between screamo and noodly Midwest emo. The whole split makes a case not just for these individual bands, but for this whole new wave of screamo in general.
Demersal – Demersal (self-released)
If you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into with this LP, the delicate acoustic guitars and hushed clean vocals of opening track “Flakkende Som Tusinde Lys” would not have you thinking it was a screamo LP. But, just seconds after that song’s final note, Demersal come roaring in with the metallic riffage and throat-shredding screams of “Bedrager.” The album is rooted in the grand, towering style of screamo that Europe tends to be best known for, and it incorporates everything from black metal to ambient post-rock to horns to electronics, all while tackling topics that range from depression to capitalism to the “hyper digital society” we live in to having some glimmer of hope in this fucked up world.
drive your plow over the bones of the dead – tragedy as catharsis (Middle-Man, No Funeral)
Is there a better name for a screamo album than tragedy as catharsis? Vancouver’s drive your plow over the bones of the dead dropped this debut album on the day of the US presidential election and said they “hope this album reminds everyone who hears it that anger is the correct response to injustice,” and it couldn’t have been a better soundtrack for that exact sentiment. The raw fury of this 18-minute album is exactly the kind of thing that’ll fire you up in the face of injustice, even when you can’t really understand what they’re screaming about. The anger itself is just so clear, and so magnetic.
Envy – Eunoia (Temporary Residence Ltd)
Another absolute winner from Envy. The legendary Japanese band’s towering eighth album covers a vast ground, from Envy’s harshest screamo side to gorgeously shimmering post-rock and shoegaze with so much else in between. The way they combine beauty and chaos has influenced countless bands (including some on this very list), and they remain masters of the form, as emotionally charged and creatively inspired as they ever were.
Frail Body – Artificial Bouquet (Deathwish)
Five years after their great debut LP A Brief Memoriam, Rockford, IL’s Frail Body are back and better than ever. For anyone who ever considered Deafheaven’s Sunbather to be kind of a screamo album (complimentary), there are two albums on this list that you need to make sure you’re not missing out on and Artificial Bouquet is one of them. It makes the line between screamo and black metal seem virtually nonexistent, and it pushes Frail Body further in every direction. It’s their heaviest music to date and also their most beautiful music to date. It’s a towering, sensory-overload experience but it still has the intimacy that you want from a great screamo record. It’s an album that provides drama in every chord change, every earth-shaking drum fill, every blown-out bassline, and every desperate shriek. It’s blackened screamo at its most emotionally overwhelming.
Heavenly Blue – We Have The Answer (Secret Voice)
Heavenly Blue morphed out of the beloved Youth Novel, and they just might be even better. With two lead vocalists and seven members in total, you have to assume you’ll be getting total chaos and that’s exactly what you get from We Have The Answer. It’s as gorgeous as it is aggressive, and it brings the energy of a great basement show right to your headphones.
Infant Island – Obsidian Wreath (Secret Voice)
Virginia’s Infant Island have always been on the black-metally side of screamo, and with their best album yet, Obsidian Wreath, they blur the lines between those two genres more than ever. (If you’ve been reading all the blurbs, yes, this is the second album on this list that fans of Deafheaven’s Sunbather need to know.) Depending on which way you squint, you can hear it in the lineage of hometown screamo heroes like Majority Rule (whose Matt Michel produced this album), pageninetynine, and City of Caterpillar, or you can hear it among the Deafheavens and the Alcests of the world. It feels punk in its brevity and its uncompromising critique of capitalism, the climate crisis, and other societal woes, and it also sounds majestic and beautiful in the way that atmospheric post-metal albums so often do. The word “apocalyptic” gets tossed around a lot when people talk about this kind of music, but there truly were few better soundtracks to our collective downward spiral than Obsidian Wreath this year.
Massa Nera / Quiet Fear – Quatro Vientos // Cinco Soles (Persistent Vision)
Split LPs have been a crucial part of screamo for decades and Quatro Vientos // Cinco Soles is one of the best ones in recent memory. It’s a bicoastal pairing, with Massa Nera from NJ and Quiet Fear from LA, and both bands bring their own regional vibes to the table. Massa Nera embrace the sludgy mathcore of a ’90s New Brunswick basement show and Quiet Fear have that classic West Coast screamo vibe, with theatrical shrieks, old school punk energy, and some Latin rhythms thrown in. Making this more interesting than one band on side A and one on Side B, the two bands alternate songs, and they end the LP with a collaborative song from both of them. It’s a cool way to do it, and it really reinforces what screamo is all about: community.
Respire – Hiraeth (Dine Alone)
For a new album that treats Godspeed You! Black Emperor-esque orchestral post-rock and chaotic Orchid/pg.99-esque screamo with equal importance, look no further than Respire’s Hiraeth. The many-membered Toronto band’s latest album has their widest scope yet–touching not just on orchestral screamo but also anything from yearning Midwest emo to black metal fury–and its desperate-yet-uplifting tone is matched by subject matter. Hiraeth is filled with a sentiment that’s been gaining more popularity as political systems look more broken: the powers that be won’t help us, so we have to help each other.
Sonagi – Everything Is Longing EP (Secret Voice)
Philly’s Sonagi (whose members also play/played in Closer, The Saddest Landscape, Capacities, and Pique) followed their great debut LP Precedent with a brief but impactful EP, Everything Is Longing. The EP was written after the death of vocalist Ryann Slauson’s father, and puts Sonagi in a long line of bands who know that screamo is one of the best outlets for grief. The record is full of the wide range of feelings that come along with losing someone close to you, and the songs are some of the most intense that Sonagi have written.
State Faults – Children of the Moon (Deathwish)
The long-running, sporadically-active band State Faults have been staples of West Coast screamo since the early 2010s, but it was a trip to the East Coast that resulted in their most spacious-sounding and best album yet. Recorded in Burlington, CT with producer Chris Teti (of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die), Children of the Moon finds State Faults sounding warmer, brighter, and more towering than ever before. No disrespect at all to the great Jack Shirley who helmed their last two albums, but it feels like Chris helped unlock something in State Faults that we’ve never heard from them before. They also wrote a batch of songs that ranges from their most instantly-satisfying and melodic (“Palo Santo”) to their most immersive (the ten-minute “No Gospel”), and throughout it all, they toe the line between shimmering beauty and harsh chaos at every turn.
Touché Amoré – Spiral In A Straight Line (Rise)
Touché Amoré prefaced their sixth album Spiral In A Straight Line by posting a list of 23 musically diverse songs that influenced it, but more than any outside reference points, Spiral In A Straight Line sounds like a reflection of the long-running, consistently-reliable, workhorse band that made it. Vocalist Jeremy Bolm himself calls it a cross between Parting the Sea and Stage Four, the widely-accepted high water marks of “early” Touché and “later” Touché, and that pretty much sums it up perfectly. Spiral has some of the fastest, most aggressive Touché songs in years, and it also continues their path outside of post-hardcore’s usual barriers. On this album, that means anything from Beatlesque chord changes to Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow interpolating one of his own songs to an underlying acoustic guitar that adds depth to almost every track on this LP. It sounds like trademark Touché Amoré, but it’s also their most subtly genre-defying album to date. And, as ever, Jeremy’s heart-on-sleeve poetry is what keeps this band in a league of their own. As he navigates mental health struggles and loss throughout Spiral In A Straight Line, he remains as autobiographical and heart-stoppingly sincere as ever.
your arms are my cocoon – death of a rabbit (self-released)
Screamo might be most associated with (and best suited for) sweaty basement shows, but your arms are my cocoon are among a new-ish crop of bands combining screamo with bedroom pop, and they’re becoming one of the most widely-loved of the bunch. death of a rabbit has as much in common with screamo as it does with Home Is Where’s emo-by-way-of-Neutral-Milk-Hotel and the rickety bedroom pop of Advance Base/Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Its very lo-fi aesthetic partially comes from the fact that some of it was literally recorded on a phone, and unlike most of the more chaotic records on this list, it truly does have the quiet comfort of a bedroom artist. It’s a concept that’s both intriguing and disorienting, and once you look past the unusual exterior, what you’ll find is an album that’s full of ambitious, melodically rich songwriting.
**
Bonus: It’s not out till December 27 and I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but based on the singles, I highly recommend the new Chivàla LP Boato too.
SEE ALSO:
* 50 Best Punk Albums of 2024
* Our 20 Favorite Hardcore Albums of 2024
* Our 32 Favorite Metal Albums of 2024
* 50 Best Albums of 2024