At the tail-end of 2019, we published a list of the 100 Best Punk & Emo Albums of the 2010s. Making a best-of-the-decade list at the end of a decade is standard practice but the timing does have a few drawbacks. How do you compare an album that’s just a few months old to albums you’ve lived with for most of the decade?
Now that we’re halfway into the next decade, we thought it’d be a good idea to look back on the 50 best punk & emo albums of the second half of the 2010s (2015-2019), the ones that are all now five to nine years old, like the ones from the first half of the 2010s were when we first made that list. As you’d probably expect, there are some albums near the top of this list that were also near the top of our original decade list, but there’s also so much that’s different about this list. Not every album reveals itself immediately (most don’t), and our perspective on the late 2010s continued to change and grow throughout the first half of the 2020s. This list includes stylistic departures that were divisive upon release but became growers over time, and it also includes albums by some now-widely-loved artists whose greatness became much more obvious throughout the early ’20s than it was in 2019. Albums themselves are set in stone once they come out, but impacts of albums are always evolving. Similarly, lists are helpful and fun tools but they’re also built to be updated and revisited. Most best-of-the-’90s lists that were created in 1999 probably didn’t include American Football and Duster. Best-of-the-’80s lists created in 1999 probably didn’t include Bleach. So on and so forth.
It says “punk & emo” in the headline, and for the purposes of this list, that includes punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, metalcore, ska, and various forms of punk/emo-adjacent music. Some of these albums could also be on a metal list, and others could also be on an indie rock list. Genre definitions can be just as subjective and debated as music taste.
Representing five years with 50 albums isn’t easy, and there were a lot of others I wished I could’ve included on this list but had to draw the line somewhere. (It’s also one album per artist, to make room for as many artists as possible.) I’m 100% sure that if I revisit the list in another five years, it’ll look different then too. As for the ranking, that would probably change if I revisited the list in another five weeks; at a certain point, the ranking just gets a little superfluous when you’re dealing with 50 albums that are all super important. As far as I’m concerned, lists like these aren’t about establishing a concrete canon; they’re about having a constant conversation.
Read on for my picks of the 50 best punk & emo albums of 2015-2019…
50. Fiddlehead – Springtime and Blind (2018)
Run For Cover
When vocalist Pat Flynn and drummer Shawn Costa of the beloved, mostly-defunct hardcore band Have Heart teamed up with Basement guitarist Alex Henery and others in Fiddlehead, the idea was never that it would become a new full-time band. Their debut EP Out of the Bloom came out in 2014 on Lockin’ Out Records, right around the time Basement started up again, and for a few years it seemed like Fiddlehead might just go down as a side project with a one-off EP. But, as fate would have it, the band regrouped for the full-length album Springtime and Blind on Run For Cover in 2018, and it became a sleeper hit that started gaining a bigger following than ever after Basement went back on hiatus and the world went into lockdown. When live music re-emerged, Fiddlehead were right there with 2021’s Between The Richness, and now they’ve got a trilogy of albums and they tour about as frequently as their schedules will allow them (in addition to recent Have Heart and Basement reunions, Pat Flynn remains busy as a high school history teacher). Springtime and Blind is the album that kicked the trilogy off, and Fiddlehead wouldn’t have become the band they are today without it. The album set the tone for a style of melodic post-hardcore that makes Fiddlehead the Fugazi to Have Heart’s Minor Threat, and it also set the lyrical theme for the trilogy, with powerful songs inspired by the death of Pat’s father. It’s gritty, energetic, and full of so much raw passion and emotion. To use the Ian MacKaye comparison one more time, it’s emo in the original mid 80s DC sense; punk rock at its most vulnerable.
49. Foxtails – querida hija (2019)
Emocat Records
Connecticut’s Foxtails have been in a constant state of evolution, with each album different from the next, and 2019’s querida hija–their third–is one of their most thrilling and unpredictable. Its starting point is ’90s-style screamo, and from there, they branch out into dizzying math rock, saxophone-fueled jazz, and airy clean vocals, with vocalist/bassist Blue Luno Solaz switching between English and Spanish. It’s an album that really doesn’t sound like many other bands, and the cerebral ambition is matched by a fury and a sense of melody that’s purely visceral. When you find music that’s this exciting on this many levels, it’s hard not to latch onto.
48. Desparecidos – Payola (2015)
Epitaph
When Bright Eyes played some of their most ornate theater shows ever at Radio City Music Hall in 2011, they brought two punkier bands with them: Superchunk and Sleater-Kinney/Helium offshoot Wild Flag. Conor Oberst must have already been getting the itch to re-embrace that side of himself, because, the following year, he reunited his punk band Desaparecidos for the first time in a decade. By 2015, the reunion resulted in Desaparecidos’ long-awaited sophomore album Payola, and it remains one of the best records in the Conor Oberst universe and hasn’t aged a bit. It’s a raw, loud, unkempt punk record that marked a stark contrast from the folkier music he’d become best known for, and it took on topics like racism, immigration, oppression, and other social, political, and economic concerns that haven’t improved in the nine years since its release. It was a reunion record but it felt like a new beginning, and it fit in perfectly with the punk landscape of the mid 2010s (they frequently toured with then-newer bands like Joyce Manor and The So So Glos). Those were triumphant, rowdy, singalong-fueled shows (that resulted in a live album recorded at beloved Bushwick DIY venue Shea Stadium), and so much of that energy was fueled by the new material.
47. Into It. Over It. – Standards (2016)
Triple Crown
After OG emo revivalist Evan Weiss got his long-overdue flowers with Into It. Over It.’s 2013 album Intersections, he was ready for something new. So he decamped to a snow-covered cabin in the small town of Craftsbury, Vermont (population less than 2,000) with no internet, no phone service, and no proximity to even a gas station or grocery store. He wrote the album with Josh Sparks, the very talented drummer that he also briefly played with in the highly underrated band Damiera, and they came out with something that felt earthier and folkier than previous IIOI albums. The new material begged for analog recording, so they went to John Vanderslice’s analog studio Tiny Telephone, where classic albums like Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism had been recorded. Vanderslice helped Evan get the warm, organic production that these songs called for, and he also helped him add in weird little embellishments made with loop pedals and distorted acoustic guitars and strings and synths. Josh Sparks also added his own flair, bringing his knack for mind-melting mathy percussion to songs like “Adult Contempt” and “Required Reading.” Standards never seemed to get as big as Intersections or that album’s 2011 predecessor Proper, but it’s a deeply ambitious album, an outlier in IIOI’s discography, and always worth returning to.
46. Balance and Composure – Light We Made (2016)
Vagrant
Balance and Composure pushed their maximalist, grungy post-hardcore about as far as it could go on 2013’s The Things We Think We’re Missing, so instead of trying to go even further in that same direction, they made a sharp left turn with Light We Made. They incorporated Kid A-style art rock, R&B-infused falsettos, electronics, and more into their music, and they learned to excel at slower, more atmospheric, more groove-based songs, not just loud, headbang-worthy ones. Confusion from fans about the new direction and lack of support from their then-new label Vagrant Records caused the album to make less of a splash than the band hoped, and the lukewarm response contributed to the band’s decision to go on hiatus, but Balance returned in 2023, and released a new album in October of 2024, and Light We Made aged like fine wine in the time that they were gone. Its airy, arty blend of emo and R&B was ahead of its time, and sounds like something that might pop off if it came out today. (It’s great that the new Balance album incorporates a lot of these elements too.) It’s a pretty drastic stylistic departure from The Things We Think We’re Missing, but it still sounds like Balance, and it cemented them as a band who are always looking for new ways to express themselves.
45. You Blew It – Abendrot (2016)
Triple Crown
There were a lot of parallel band trajectories happening during the emo revival era, and the narrative surrounding the final pre-hiatus You Blew It album is pretty similar to the one surrounding the aforementioned Balance and Composure album that came out two months before it. You Blew It were at the right place at the right time when their 2014 sophomore album Keep Doing What You’re Doing became one of the key breakthrough records of the emo revival era, and by 2016, they wanted to try something besides reviving ’90s emo. Even before you clicked play, you knew Abendrot was a shift. They dropped the exclamation point from their name, the album title was a German word that translates to “sunset” or “afterglow,” and hundred-dollar-word song titles like “Epaulette” and “Autotheology” suggested a maturation for a band who previously released songs called “There’s Nothing I Love More Than Baseball” and “Award of the Year Award.” The music got darker, more atmospheric, and more rooted in post-rock and art rock than basement emo, and vocalist/guitarist Tanner Jones took on a more somber delivery and started exploring deeper, often more religious-based themes with his lyrics. Like Light We Made, it was met with confusion from people who were expecting charged-up, catchy emo songs, but for my money, it remains one of the adventurous gems of its era. The style was different, but the unique voice that You Blew It had developed over the years was not. It was their second consecutive album produced by Evan Weiss, who was fresh off making his own stylistic departure with Standards, so experimentation was in the air and You Blew It really allowed themselves to get weird. They took chances, they went outside of their comfort zone, and they made a record that probably surprised everyone who heard it. Keep Doing What You’re Doing might be the most classic You Blew It album, but Abendrot is by far the most interesting.
44. The Interrupters – Fight the Good Fight (2018)
Epitaph/Hellcat
Ska-punk never died, but it did become a whole lot harder to find than it was during its peak popularity in the late ’90s and early 2000s. That is, until The Interrupters had a surprise hit on alternative radio with their ridiculously catchy ska-punk anthem “She’s Kerosene” in 2018. They weren’t the only band doing ska-punk in the late 2010s (nor are they the only one on this list), but they were the most visible and also one of the best. “She’s Kerosene” is one of 12 songs on The Interrupters’ third LP, Fight the Good Fight, and almost all the others sound like they could’ve been hits too with the right push. Produced by and co-written with Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (who also released it on his Epitaph imprint Hellcat), Fight the Good Fight is the kind of gritty, singalong ska-punk than Rancid made on …And Out Come the Wolves, and The Interrupters brought a fresh new perspective that won over old ska-punk heads and genre newcomers alike. The Interrupters dealt with a lot of cynicism (and sexism) from people who questioned the band’s success or tried to give Tim all the credit, but at the end of the day, the power of these songs drowns all that other noise out.
43. I Hate Sex – Circle Thinking (2015)
Too Far Gone Records
Like so many of the best screamo bands, Edmonton’s I Hate Sex came and went far too quickly but their influence lives on. Whether it was out of necessity or an artistic choice, they eschewed the more polished, post-rocky sound that dominated screamo in the first half of the decade and went for something as raw and bare-bones as possible, something that sounds like a barely-mixed recording of I Hate Sex just setting up in a room and playing. Circle Thinking is often listed as an EP, but with seven songs in 17 and a half minutes, that can count as an LP in this genre, and it’s also home to some of the band’s most undeniable songwriting. It’s the perfect mix of harshness, passion, and beauty, fueled by thoughts of life, death, dreams, and existentialism. It carried the torch for the raw screamo of the early ’90s, and it also helped set the tone for a lot of the super lo-fi, DIY emo and screamo of the 2020s. I Hate Sex weren’t the first or the last band to do this kind of classic, straight-up, traditional screamo, but they did it in a way that’s stood out from the pack for nearly a decade straight.
42. Kill Lincoln – Good Riddance to Good Advice (2015)
Jump Start/Bad Time Records
Kill Lincoln’s 2020 album Can’t Complain was a breakthrough and a comeback all at once. Released just one month before lead vocalist Mike Sosinski’s record label Bad Time Records helped shine a much-needed light on the thriving ska-punk scene with its Ska Against Racism comp, Can’t Complain became one of the leading new albums of what’s since been dubbed the New Tone ska movement. Can’t Complain‘s a fantastic record, but Kill Lincoln had already mastered their brand of ’90s-style ska-punk revival on 2015’s Good Riddance to Good Advice, a hefty EP that marked their third lengthy release (made even lengthier with live bonus tracks on the 2018 Bad Time Records re-release). Good Riddance taps into the snotty ska-punk of ’90s bands like Less Than Jake and The Suicide Machines, and they do it in a way that’s truly just as good as those bands were in their prime. They also flirt with some early 2000s Drive-Thru Records-style pop punk throughout the record, and go full hardcore on “Fire Starter,” and they do all of it just as well as they do ska-punk. The melodies are irresistible, the lyrics are smart (and smarter than a lot of their predecessors), and Kill Lincoln hit every guitar riff and horn line and “whoa-oh!” with so much intention. There’s a clear nostalgia/familiarity factor to what Kill Lincoln do, and it’s pretty rare to hear a band make nostalgia sound as completely fresh as this one does.
41. Mindforce – Excalibur (2018)
Triple B Records
The members of Hudson Valley hardcore band Mindforce had been playing in hardcore bands for years before Mindforce formed, and they continue to play in other active bands, but the stars aligned for Mindforce in a way that’s unlike any of their other projects. They’ve become New York Hardcore kings, and the magic was all there on their 2018 debut LP Excalibur. Guitarist Mike Shaw is a crossover thrash riffer that could go up against any ’80s great, vocalist Jay Peta has a powerful bark that’s catchy without ever being “melodic,” and the rhythm section of drummer Donny Ruckdeschel and bassist Nick Haines gives Excalibur exactly the kind of ass-kicking backbone that it needs. Jay stirred up some discourse in 2023 when he said on stage that real hardcore happens at the shows, not on the internet, and with the risk of re-igniting that debate, I’ll state the obvious by adding that the very best records often get you to those shows, and Excalibur is one of those records.
40. SeeYouSpaceCowboy – The Correlation Between Entrance and Exit Wounds (2019)
Pure Noise
If you’ve heard the word sasscore at any point in the past five years, there’s a good chance SeeYouSpaceCowboy are to thank. They didn’t invent the sassy style of hardcore/screamo pioneered in the 2000s by bands like The Blood Brothers, Fear Before the March of Flames, and Heavy Heavy Low Low, nor did they come up with the word (music critic Scott Heisel used it as far back as 2004), but their own revival of that music brought new relevance to the term and helped present it as a prominent, distinct subgenre. SYSC fused sass with Underoath-style metalcore across a series of EPs, singles, and splits that were collected in 2019 for the Songs for the Firing Squad compilation, followed later that year by their first full-length album, The Correlation Between Entrance and Exit Wounds. It’s an onslaught of sassy shrieks, panic chord breakdowns, melodic metalcore riffage, and the occasional pretty emo part, and it sounds like the best 2004 scene record that never existed. SYSC would go on to expand their sound and get more genre-transcendent with each release (2024’s poppier, dancier Coup De Grâce is my favorite record of theirs yet), but if you want the band in pure ass-beating mode, look no further than The Correlation Between Entrance and Exit Wounds.
39. Pool Kids – Music To Practice Safe Sex To (2018)
Skeletal Lightning
Mathy, Midwest-style emo started getting a little too oversaturated when it became copies of the same copies of the same copies, and Pool Kids stood out right off the bat because they weren’t just worshipping at the same Kinsella-rooted altar as everyone else. Singer/guitarist Christine Goodwyne was already a guitar virtuoso before forming the band, and after finding mathy emo through the DIY scene in Tallahassee, she gravitated towards the raw energy of it and already had the chops to pull it off. So, she linked up with drummer Caden Clinton, busted out an array of tappy, tech-y math rock riffs, and infused them with some catchy choruses that embraced her powerhouse pipes. As you may have heard, the album won over none other than Hayley Williams, who said the band sounded like what Paramore “wished we sounded like in the early 2000s.” The band was fiercely DIY in a way that Paramore never really had the chance to be, and the album has the kinds of big, soaring hooks that the DIY bands tended to shy away from (or just couldn’t pull off). They became a four-piece band and got even poppier on their breakthrough 2022 album, but even in this rawer, two-piece form, Pool Kids’ mission and charm was clear. They were as gritty and sincere as any great underground emo band, and not too self-conscious to embrace the genre’s poppier bands too. Along with some other likeminded peers, they helped kick off a new wave of emo where nothing is off limits.
38. The Callous Daoboys – Die On Mars (2019)
Acrobat Unstable/Dark Trail/Pattern Recognition
When I interviewed The Callous Daoboys about their 2022 sophomore album Celebrity Therapist, vocalist Carson Pace said, “I consider what we do closer to pop music than it is to grindcore or something like that. Like, I’m aiming at pop music, I just happened to take this pretty big left turn.” It’s a unique stance for a band that most label as “mathcore,” and not a surprising stance once you actually listen to the Daoboys’ music, which is increasingly far too wide-ranging to fit into one specific niche subgenre. It was also already clear on their debut album Die On Mars, which knocked it out of the park in a way that very few debut albums from young heavy bands do. You can quickly spot the album’s influences–the freakish chaos of The Dillinger Escape Plan and DEP forebears/collaborators Mr. Bungle, the sarcastic theatrics of the Daoboys’ Georgia hometown heroes The Chariot, the gut-punch of Botch–but Die On Mars stirs together those influences in a way that sounds more like continuing a conversation than reviving a past era. It is simultaneously some of the heaviest, catchiest, and weirdest music to come out of not just the modern mathcore/metalcore scene but the modern punk/metal world in general, and it pulls off ambitious feats with the prowess of a much more seasoned band. It’s an ever-changing journey that goes from breakdowns to jazz passages, from ferocious screams to soaring clean-singing, with violin, sax, keyboards, spoken word samples, a sneering sense of humor, and more along the way. It would risk getting too technical and ambitious for its own good if it wasn’t so goddamn fun.
37. Origami Angel – Somewhere City (2019)
Counter Intuitive
By the late 2010s, the vocabulary of emo had expanded to the point where everything from Cap’n Jazz’s scrappy, mathy emo-punk to Fall Out Boy’s radio hits were seen as valid and necessary parts of an ever-evolving whole, and few bands fused just about all of it together the way Origami Angel did on their debut album Somewhere City. The DC duo embrace it all: Kinsella-via-Algernon riffs, the quirky pop of Modern Baseball and their predecessors Motion City Soundtrack, heavier moments that pull from screamo and sludge metal, and stuff from outside of emo like Van Halen-worthy guitar heroism. The individual ingredients were familiar but Gami approached it all in a way that was defiantly modern, and it really helped set the tone for the wave of emo that took over in the following decade. Like so many of the best and most unique emo bands, Gami have been playing by their own rulebook since day one, and if you’ve seen their sizable crowds react to their live sets, you know it’s working. They seem like a band who wants you to expect the unexpected as much as they want you to have fun and sing along. And, like many of the best emo bands, they aren’t tied down to the confines of the genre. Judging by the increasingly-genre-blurring records that followed Somewhere City, Origami Angel may never make another straightforwardly concise emo album again, and they don’t have to. The one they’ve got is nearly perfect.
36. Catbite – Catbite (2019)
Bad Time Records
Bad Time Records launched in 2018 to help bring the post-third-wave ska scene together as a unified force, and after doing two reissues, the label’s first proper release was the debut album by a band that barely existed at the time, Catbite. I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted back then that the band would go on to help lead a new movement in American ska, but once their undeniable debut album started catching on, the idea didn’t seem so crazy. Across eight catchy songs with no filler, Catbite came up with a version of ska that pulled from 2 Tone, garage rock, power pop, soul, The Clash, and more, and it had the energy and spirit of punk but largely eschewed the style of American ska-punk that became so maligned by the early 2000s. It seemed like the kind of album that could please everyone from old heads to skeptics to people that were just looking for an exciting new band (and eventual movement) to latch onto. It’s a feel-good, well-crafted album by a band who quickly became too strong to ignore, with one song after the next that feels like it could be a hit with the right push.
35. Shin Guard – Death of Spring (with For Your Health) + 2020 (2019)
Twelve Gauge
Splits have been a great way to document different scenes/eras of punk since almost the beginning of punk itself, and for me, the screamo split that defined the dawn of the 2020s was Shin Guard and For Your Health’s Death of Spring (released just months apart from Shin Guard’s own album, actually titled 2020). A full decade removed from the era that bands like Touché Amoré and Pianos Become the Teeth brought screamo to a new generation of music, these two bands were right on schedule to breathe thrilling new life into the genre once again. FYH’s half of Death of Spring touched on everything from the chaotic, discordant side of screamo to the heavy/beautiful side to a little bit of the then-ensuing sass resurgence, while Shin Guard went for something a little more melodic on both Death of Spring and 2020. They flirted with Fall of Troy-style lead guitars and the occasional soaring clean vocal, and even their long stretches of harsh fury had a catchiness to them (plus they threw in a few death growls for good measure). Both Death of Spring and 2020 really felt like fresh new takes on screamo, though it would also be the last of its kind from these bands. Shin Guard shifted their lineup around and morphed into the deathcore-tinged Hazing Over, and For Your Health have been on a path towards becoming a cleaner emo-pop band. It’s been pretty fascinating to watch the way the two bands’ paths have diverged, and it just makes Death of Spring and 2020 hold up as an even more significant snapshot of what turned out to be a very unique time for music of this kind.
34. The Wonder Years – No Closer to Heaven (2015)
Hopeless
It’s clear from interviews that No Closer to Heaven is one of The Wonder Years’ least favorite albums that they’ve made, and I get why, but I think they’re underselling it. They’ve referred to it as being more of a half-step forward compared to the three albums that preceded it, and they’ve explained that that’s part of why they made such a longer leap on 2018’s Sister Cities (which is also underrated). But I think No Closer to Heaven is a bigger leap than the band credits it for being. Its 2013 predecessor The Greatest Generation is the most nearly-perfect pop punk album of its generation (no pun intended), whereas Sister Cities is a clean break from pop punk, and No Closer to Heaven is the necessary bridge between them. On this album, they’re pushing themselves about as far as they can go without abandoning the unique thrills of pop punk, and it reaches a destination that not many other bands of The Wonder Years’ ilk ever do. You can feel the blood and sweat flying off of them when they hit the climaxes of “Cardinals,” and the emotional release of the grief-stricken power ballad “Cigarettes & Saints” is among the most cathartic moments in the band’s entire catalog. Those songs and the fan-fave singalong “I Don’t Like Who I Was” were the singles for a reason, but there’s plenty to love about the deep cuts too, whether it’s the drama of “A Song For Patsy Cline” and “I Wanted So Badly to Be Brave,” or rippers like “The Bluest Things On Earth” and “Thanks for the Ride.” It does admittedly have a couple moments that feel a little undercooked for The Wonder Years’ standards, but the highs far outweigh the lows, and some of those highs are among the highest the band has ever reached.
33. Portrayal of Guilt – Let Pain Be Your Guide (2018)
Gilead Media
Portrayal of Guilt have been in a lane of their own since arriving on the Austin hardcore scene in 2017, and almost everything that has made this band so thrillingly unique is captured on their debut LP, Let Pain Be Your Guide. Elements of screamo, hardcore, black metal, death metal, grindcore, powerviolence, post-rock, melodic emo, and more come through in these songs–which were expertly produced by Matt Michel of screamo vets Majority Rule (and NØ MAN)–and the results really don’t sound like any other band. It’s gnarly, it’s beautiful, it’s intense, and it’s overflowing with the kind of wide-eyed creativity and emotional sincerity that just can’t be faked.
32. Converge – The Dusk In Us (2017)
Epitaph
After releasing four albums in the 2000s, Converge’s output slowed down in the 2010s with just two LPs, 2012’s All We Love We Leave Behind and 2017’s The Dusk In Us, but a lower quantity of records did not mean a less significant era. In addition to continuing to tour their asses off and put on some of the best shows in aggressive music, Converge released two albums that added new layers to the band and their no-skips catalog. The Converge of the 2010s sounded a little more grizzled than previous eras of the band, and songs like The Dusk In Us‘ slowcore-ish “Thousands of Miles Between Us” found their somber side sounding more effective than ever, but they were no less frantic and chaotic. The Dusk In Us is overflowing with moments where Converge continue to do mathy, metallic hardcore better than most bands in existence, let alone one that’s been operating on a nearly-untouchable level for three decades. The Dusk In Us-era Converge stood tall next to fellow lifelong giants like Neurosis and At the Gates, as well as the hungry younger bands that took after them like Candy and Full of Hell. Converge get this kind of hype for every album they put out, but it’s never just because they’re a legacy act. They start from scratch and earn it every time.
31. Citizen – Everybody Is Going To Heaven (2015)
Run For Cover
Citizen’s 2013 debut LP Youth perfected the melodic hardcore/emo sound that the band had been working towards since their 2011 split with The Fragile Season and it captured the hearts of a new generation of emo kids hungry for a band to call their own, but Citizen had no interest in giving the world Youth Pt. 2. Instead, they followed Youth with Everybody Is Going To Heaven, a caustic post-hardcore LP that pulled from things like Nirvana’s In Utero, Brand New’s Daisy, and The Jesus Lizard. This was the time when so many bands in and around the Run For Cover/Title Fight orbit were starting to embrace shoegaze and dream pop, and Citizen pivoted hard in a much gnarlier direction; Everybody Is Going To Heaven not only sounded nothing like Youth, it also sounded nothing like anything else happening in the scene that Citizen were part of. And, most importantly, it ripped. It turned out these Michigan/Ohio emo kids could make some really nasty stuff. The album was met by a lot of confusion from fans, and ignored by a lot of the people who might’ve actually liked something that sounded similar to The Jesus Lizard, and that’s probably because Citizen understood who they really were and what they were really about before much of their audience did. Everybody Is Going To Heaven put Citizen on a path towards never repeating themselves, and that’s continued across what is now a rock-solid, five-album catalog. Their more recent material is some of their best and most widely-loved, and they couldn’t have gotten to where they are today if they didn’t wipe the slate clean with Everybody Is Going To Heaven.
30. Drug Church – Cheer (2018)
Pure Noise
It’s been a very long time coming for Patrick Kindlon. After leading the long-running, still-active experimental hardcore collective Self Defense Family (fka End of a Year) for nearly a decade, he launched the more straightforward Drug Church with a demo in 2011, and for the first few years, the band seemed like a side project compared to SDF. But that switch eventually flipped, and it all started with Drug Church’s third album, 2018’s Cheer. It owes as much of its power to Patrick’s commanding bark and biting lyricism as it does to guitarist Nick Cogan’s wall-of-sound riffs, which pull more from alt-rock bands like the Pixies and Seaweed than they do from the hardcore scene that Drug Church calls home. Self Defense Family’s music can get very cerebral, but Drug Church is 100% visceral. It’s loud, fun, body music that’s built to get crowds jumping around and yelling along, and that’s exactly what Drug Church have done with their Cheer songs on a countless amount of tours. It’s a non-stop adrenaline rush, even when the subject matter isn’t the slightest bit positive.
29. Every Time I Die – Low Teens (2016)
Epitaph
After releasing one of the heaviest albums of their career with 2014’s Kurt Ballou-produced From Parts Unknown, Every Time I Die began a fruitful relationship with producer Will Putney on their eighth album Low Teens, an album that also began the band’s exciting yet ill-fated final chapter. It’s quintessential Every Time I Die, with 13 songs that push the band in all sorts of directions, from their bluesiest licks (the intros of “Fear and Trembling” and “It Remembers”) to their most furious hardcore (“Glitches,” “Just as Real but Not as Brightly Lit”) to their catchiest singalongs (“C++ [Love Will Get You Killed],” “Two Summers”) to their most unpredictable and genre-defying moments (“Religion of Speed”). They pay tribute to their OG metalcore roots with guest barks on “Fear and Trembling” from Tim Singer of Deadguy, who were a clear influence on ETID since day one, and they also go in the exact opposite direction, embracing pop crossover with a guest appearance by Panic! the Disco’s Brendon Urie, who sounds way more natural on an Every Time I Die song than you might’ve guessed he would. (Side note: Brendon should do more metalcore! He’s good at it!) And throughout all of it, Keith — who had published his first novel Scale a year prior — continued to expand his lyricism, writing songs that were literary and poetic like “Fear and Trembling,” as well as more personal songs that touched on his wife, newborn child, and his own struggles with alcohol, and more macro issues like the terrorist attack in Paris that inspired “Glitches.” As on From Parts Unknown‘s “Overstayer,” Low Teens also looks at what’s going on internally when you’re fronting a band and living in the public eye for this long. “I want to live in the year 2000/When I was dumb enough to truly believe,” he sings on “Awful Lot,” and on “The Coin Has A Say” he adds, “I can’t go back to what I was/Metallica without the drugs.” It’s clear in hindsight that the tension within the band was growing, but the silver lining is that it led to some of ETID’s very best records before it caused them to implode.
28. Superheaven – Ours Is Chrome (2015)
SideOneDummy
“Grungegaze” has become a trend to the point of oversaturation, but when Superheaven was first tapping into that combination of sounds, it was still a pretty new idea. (A new idea made up of old ideas, but a new idea nonetheless.) Having originally formed under the name Daylight, the Doylestown, PA band released a string of great melodic hardcore EPs before really finding themselves on their 2013 debut album Jar. Produced by Will Yip and released on Run For Cover when that label/producer combo was still in its infancy, the album was like a ’90s dream band, where bits and pieces of grunge bands like Nirvana and Alice In Chains, shoegazy alt-rock bands like Hum and Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins, and post-hardcore bands like Quicksand all came together at once–and Daylight had the saggy flannels to match. It recontextualized grunge as an offshoot of punk rather than a version of radio-friendly hard rock, it helped introduce shoegaze to the modern punk/emo lexicon, and it wasn’t just about nostalgia; it also had the gritty, forward-thinking sincerity that Daylight and their Pennsylvania peers in Title Fight, Tigers Jaw, and Balance & Composure all developed from coming up alongside each other. After Jar took off, Daylight signed to SideOneDummy and changed their name to Superheaven after being threatened with legal action by a Spanish band called Daylight, and they released their second and final album, Ours Is Chrome. It picks up where its predecessor left off, and it often improves upon it. It finds Superheaven continuing to really develop a voice that stands out from both their influences and their peers, and writing some of their catchiest, most enduring songs in the process.
27. Vein – Errorzone (2018)
Closed Casket Activities
It was only a matter of time before echoes of nu metal started making their way into the hardcore scene–it was a gateway drug for so many heavy music fans–and it’s thanks to tastefully nu-leaning hardcore bands like Vein that even the biggest nu metal haters had to re-evaluate their biases. Vein’s 2018 debut album Errorzone is like an alternate 1999 where Botch’s We Are the Romans and Slipknot’s first album frequently crossed paths, and it’s as chaotic sounding as both of them. It’s an aural onslaught of glitchy freakouts, body-shaking low end, Anthony DiDio’s desperate screams, flashes of Deftones’ clean spacey side, and enough futuristic electronics to reinforce the “nu” prefix (or “doomtech,” if you will). It has the drive and lack of restraint of a young band who just wants to do everything they like at once, and it sounds as simultaneously taxing and exciting to listen to as I can only imagine it was to make. Vein went on to release one more album in 2022, but its members have since been keeping more busy in their now even more popular, shoegazier band Fleshwater.
26. Modern Baseball – Holy Ghost (2016)
Run For Cover
On their third and final album, the most seemingly-carefree band in fourth wave emo opened up about the darkness that had been growing beneath their ever-smiling surface. As outlined in the mini documentary Tripping in the Dark, co-leader Bren Lukens nearly took their own life in the leadup to the album’s creation, and, at the encouragement of their bandmates, friends, and family, checked themselves into a facility where they were diagnosed with bipolar disorder, manic depression, substance abuse issues including alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts and tendencies. Bren first started opening up about their struggles on the late-2015 EP MOBO Presents: The Perfect Cast EP, and then dove in even deeper with Holy Ghost. The album is separated into two halves, with all of Jake Ewald’s songs on the first half and all of Bren’s on the second, and both halves take on a darker tone than anything Modern Baseball had released previously. Jake had recently lost his grandfather, and many of his songs are informed by grief, and the increasingly tough band life that Modern Baseball had been leading seemed to inform some of his sentiments on “Note to Self” (“Where I want to be still seems a thousand miles away/But pretending we feel safe right here gets harder every day”). Bren’s songs dealt almost entirely with their mental health struggles and then-recent treatment process, and they saved the most impactful song for last, “Just Another Face.” Modern Baseball had started doing a lot of Killers covers on tour, and with this song, they put their own darker spin on a Killers-esque anthem. It’s a rousing, cathartic singalong with lyrics that induce goosebumps every time. Those looking for another “Your Graduation” weren’t getting it from Holy Ghost, but what the band did give us is something even more powerful and enduring.
25. Soul Glo – The N**** In Me Is Me (2019)
SRA
The breakthrough success of Soul Glo’s 2022 album Diaspora Problems was far from overnight. At that point, the band had been grinding for nearly a decade, with two other full-length albums and multiple EPs under their belts, including their pivotal 2019 sophomore album The N**** In Me Is Me. It’s not as refined as Diaspora Problems, but so much of what makes that album great is already present on this album. The Bad Brains-meets-Orchid vibes are both rawer and more pronounced on this LP, and it’s still got no lack of the hip hop, electronic, and noise elements that made the followup album a genre-blurring crossover. The chaos is constant for the LP’s 9-song, under-18-minute runtime, and Pierce Jordan’s lyrics read like sociopolitical screeds, rather than hardcore sloganeering. Soul Glo more than doubled that runtime on Diaspora Problems, but on this album, they wanted to get in, leave an impact, and get right out. To say that’s what they ultimately did would be a massive understatement.
24. Prince Daddy & the Hyena – Cosmic Thrill Seekers (2019)
Counter Intuitive
To quote bandleader Kory Gregory, Prince Daddy & the Hyena came up around a fanbase that favored “face-value, instantly relatable ‘This is how I feel, my girlfriend won’t text me back, I’m smoking weed and eating Cheetos in bed’ kind of lyrics,” so it took a lot of people by surprise when the young emo band’s sophomore album was a three-act concept record inspired by The Monitor, The Black Parade, American Idiot, and The Wizard of Oz. Kory says he spent four years writing everything himself before showing any of it to the band, and the record explores the depths of his mental health struggles in a way that sometimes sounds like he’s writing down thoughts mid-spiral. Almost every line he sings is pushed to a raspy half-scream, and the musical backdrop is just as ambitious as the lyrical concept, with everything from high-speed emo-punk to mid-tempo power pop to ragged acoustic guitars to twinkling glockenspiels to the occasional heroic guitar solo. And even if Kory had arena-sized albums like American Idiot and The Black Parade in mind, he maintains a raw, DIY, basement show spirit throughout the entirety of Cosmic Thrill Seekers. It’s an album that immediately stood out from Prince Daddy’s peers and forebears, and half a decade later, there’s still not much else like it.
23. We Are The Union – Self Care
WATU Records
Self Care was Michigan ska-punk band We Are The Union’s fourth album and first in six years, but at this point, it feels more like the first album for the new era of WATU that they’ve been in ever since. It found singer/guitarist Reade Wolcott opening up about mental health in a more emotionally honest, vulnerable way than ever before, setting the stage for her to write her coming-out record as a trans woman with 2021’s instantly-canonized Ordinary Life, and it was also their first with trumpet player Jeremy Hunter (aka JER), a longtime fan of the band whose knack for melody and arrangements helped make Self Care the most intricate album that WATU had written up to that point. Stylistically, it broke from the D-beating pop punk-ska of the band’s earlier records, and embraced a warmer fusion of ska, punk, indie, and emo that looked more to the forward-thinking, soon-to-come New Tone movement than to any past eras of ska and punk. That’s not to say that it’s a drastic departure from the popular ’90s bands that WATU are obviously enamored with, but they really brought something new to the table that did much more than replicate their heroes. And for my money, you can put “A Better Home” up against just about any major ’90s ska-punk single.
22. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love (2015)
Sub Pop
A lot of ’90s-era punk bands made long-awaited comebacks in the 2010s, but none went as smoothly as Sleater-Kinney’s (even if the situation got a little stickier later on). Right off the bat, Sleater-Kinney announced a reunion tour and a new album the same day. Their reunion was never going to be about nostalgia, and they didn’t even do one round of dates dedicated to the classics. By the time the tour began, No Cities To Love had been released, and their setlists were as dedicated to that album as their 2005 setlists were to The Woods. Not a lot of bands can pull off something like that, but Sleater-Kinney could because No Cities To Love was on par with any of their best albums. It’s stacked with so many great songs, which all have the same strong hooks and same sense of purpose as Sleater-Kinney’s classic songs (and even more guitar heroism). It’s the rare reunion album that you quickly forget is a “reunion album,” because it so naturally and quickly became an essential part of this band’s already-fruitful discography.
21. Oso Oso – The Yunahon Mixtape (2017)
self-released
The Yunahon Mixtape wasn’t intended as a breakthrough; it was intended as a last ditch effort. After leading the Long Island emo-punk band State Lines and launching Oso Oso (originally called osoosooso) with a self-titled EP in 2014 and releasing the album Real Stories of True People Who Kind of Looked Like Monsters the following year, Jade Lilitri did a stint filling in on guitar for his friends The Hotelier on their Goodness tour, and it lit a fire under him to really go for it with his own project. He made a conscious break from his punkier roots to embrace indie rock and sunny power pop, and he came out with The Yunahon Mixtape, which is called that because it’s an album about a fictional mixtape from a fictional place called Yunahon, where the album takes place. The album is a lovely, clever helping of post-emo guitar pop that shares DNA with anything from Death Cab to The Sidekicks, with lyricism that can be quirky and conversational one minute and profoundly poetic the next. It was an album that was too good to ignore, but Jade knew that it had a very high chance of being ignored anyway, so he devised an unorthodox, high-risk/high-reward plan to release it. He surprise-dropped it in early January, when almost no albums were coming out, and it got the boost it needed when it caught the eye of Ian Cohen, who then reviewed it for Pitchfork, which started a domino effect that ultimately led to Oso Oso signing to Triple Crown and touring the world with a slew of established bands. There’s of course a little luck involved, but Yunahon feels like one of those truly unpredictable, organic success stories that happened because the music deserved it.
20. Code Orange – Forever (2017)
Roadrunner
Code Orange are a band in a constant state of evolution, and their third album Forever found them at a thrilling crossroads. On it, they fully sharpen the metalcore blade that they broke out after dropping the “Kids” from their name on 2014’s I Am King, and they start leaning more into the industrial and alt-rock influences that fueled 2020’s Underneath. With the dream team production duo of Kurt Ballou and Will Yip, Code Orange prove to be as experimental as they are bludgeoning. Forever dishes out some of the darkest, heaviest metalcore of the 2010s without ever relying on any tired clichés, and it also found them starting to hone their pop sensibilities, particularly on the Reba Meyers-sung standout “Bleeding in the Blur.” It’s the kind of radio-friendly rock song that we just don’t hear enough of anymore, and Code Orange made it feel new again.
19. Angel Du$t – Rock the Fuck On Forever (2016)
Pop Wig
When Trapped Under Ice was entering their hiatus, vocalist Justice Tripp was itching to take his music in a new direction. “People can be afraid to grow, afraid to change,” Justice says in the band’s latest bio. “But I want to be an artist, I want to change and I want to evolve.” That’s exactly what he’s now done for a decade straight as the leader of Angel Du$t. Their first EP (2013’s Xtra Raw) and LP (2014’s A.D.) set the tone for a lighter, happier, catchier version of hardcore than TUI, and the band’s 2016 sophomore LP Rock the Fuck On Forever used those early releases as a launchpad to take hardcore in all kinds of unpredictable directions. The band’s lineup on this album included Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang and guitarist Pat McCrory (who would join Turnstile that year), and backing vocals from Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, and RTFOF feels like a direct precursor to the style of hardcore that Turnstile would help popularize a few years later–especially with the trademark Daniel Fang rhythms that fuel a song like the now-iconic album opener “Toxic Boombox.” It was also produced by the aforementioned Will Yip, who has a serious knack for helping bands explore new territory. Justice seamlessly bounces between hardcore barks and power pop hooks, and it results in some of the catchiest, most inventive, and still-moshable songs Justice has ever written. The album is loaded with contradictions–too pop for hardcore kids, too aggressive for pop punk–and it’s even more loaded with bangers. It wasn’t universally loved upon release–“Angel Du$t isn’t about self-hatred, it’s about love,” Justice said, “and at the time that didn’t feel like what people wanted from me–they wanted me to be the evil guy”–but it’s since proven to have been far ahead of its time. People are still catching up to it.
18. Joyce Manor – Cody (2016)
Epitaph
Joyce Manor’s 2011 debut album was one of those near-perfect, instant-classic debuts that may never be topped in cult status or in legacy, but Joyce Manor made clear artistic progressions time and time again since its release. And, as of right now, that artistic progression peaked on 2016’s Cody. Most of Joyce Manor’s music prior was rippin’, no-frills melodic punk/emo, but for Cody they slowed down, teamed with Elliott Smith producer Rob Schnapf, brought in backing vocals from Nate Ruess and a pre-fame Phoebe Bridgers, and made their most downright gorgeous album to date. The debut’s youthful energy was as apparent in the lyrics as it was in the fast-paced power chords, but Cody saw Barry Johnson stretching his lyrical wings. He could be funny, witty, introspective, and poignant all at once, and he packed in just as many quotable one-liners as he did on the earlier material. The more fine-tuned lyricism was the perfect fit for Cody‘s warm production, jangling guitars, and forays outside of punk like on the Phoebe Bridgers-aided acoustic song “Do You Really Want To Not Get Better?” (Joyce Manor had cool acoustic songs on their underrated sophomore record Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired too, but they really perfected it on Cody.) Cody was a clear departure from the classic Joyce Manor sound, which is usually a necessary move for bands like Joyce Manor — straight-ahead punk gets stagnant quickly. They of course weren’t the first punk band to ever try out cleaner sounds and slower tempos, but what’s so impressive about Cody is that Joyce Manor managed to branch out from their signature sound while still sounding entirely like themselves.
17. awakebutstillinbed – what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way that other people see you (2018)
Tiny Engines
No list of iconic emo album openers is complete without “opener,” the first song on the first album by San Jose trailblazers awakebutstillinbed. For the uninitiated, it starts with nothing more than Shannon’s voice and lightly overdriven electric guitar, and the more it goes on, the more Shannon’s voice distorts into a raspy, untamed scream. Finally, about 70% of the way through the five-minute, 20-second song, the whole band comes crashing in with an explosive climax. Shannon’s whisper-to-scream range has been compared to Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan, but it’s like if Frances was aiming for ’90s screamo instead of Y2K-era Saddle Creek. “opener” sets the tone for the remainder of this remarkable debut album, which is intimate/raw and grand in scope all at once. The album came out as “fourth wave emo”/emo revival was dying down, and it felt like a breath of fresh air for the genre–once people started tossing around the term “fifth wave” during the pandemic, it’s easy to see why what people call low self-esteem started getting referred to as one of the new wave’s most pivotal records. Equal parts harsh and pretty sounding, it looked back to the way emo sounded before it was ever touched by commercialism or professionalism, and awakebutstillinbed approached that music with a new, modern outlook. History repeats itself, and it seems like one thing’s pretty consistent: when emo needs a little reboot, it goes back to the basement.
16. Gouge Away – Burnt Sugar (2018)
Deathwish
After arriving on the scene as a dark, intense hardcore band, Gouge Away began expanding their sound and bringing in elements of alternative rock and other related genres on their 2018 sophomore LP Burnt Sugar–they are named after a Pixies song, after all. The genre-blurring record helped set the tone for what a lot of hardcore would look and sound like in the following decade, and Gouge Away themselves probably wouldn’t have had their own big moment with 2024’s Deep Sage without Burnt Sugar getting the world ready for it six years earlier. Without abandoning the attack of their 2016 debut LP , Dies, Burnt Sugar injects dissonant, Sonic Youth-y guitars into angular post-hardcore on “Dis s o c i a t i o n.” “Ghost” actually kinda sounds like a Pixies song, with slowed-down tempos, grungy guitars, and a delivery from vocalist Christina Michelle that bounces between airy singing and harsh shrieks. “Stray/Burnt Sugar” is a full-on melodic indie/alt rock banger with a hard-hitting backbone courtesy of Gouge Away’s roots. And before you accuse Gouge Away of getting too cozy, they follow that song with the discordant AmRep-style post-hardcore of “Wilt (I Won’t)” and the bleak, Slint-like “Raw Blood.”
15. Touché Amoré – Stage Four (2016)
Epitaph
Amidst a bout of writer’s block, Jeremy Bolm found himself wondering what the future of Touché Amoré would look like if he continued to feel like he had nothing left to write about. Those thoughts permeated the band’s very meta third album Is Survived By, an album on which Jeremy set it in stone that Touché would only return if he really had something to say. And then, on Halloween night of 2014, Jeremy went from having nothing to write about to having everything in the world to write about.
As Jeremy revealed throughout the album and in accompanying interviews, he received a voicemail while he was on stage at The Fest that night with the news that his mother had passed away from stage four breast cancer. Her diagnosis gave Touché Amoré’s fourth album its double entendre title, and all of Jeremy’s thoughts and feelings came pouring out of him across 12 of Touché’s most powerful, enduring songs. Further perfecting the previous album’s formula, the band delivers the beauty of intertwining post-rock guitars at hardcore’s speed, and Jeremy delivers his devastatingly honest inner monologue with such clarity in his screams that you almost forget he’s screaming. (He also finds a few moments to toy with his singing voice, which he’s continued to hone over the years.) It’s a goosebump-inducing, bar-raising album, and it set a new standard for a band who was already one of the most impacting of their generation.
14. Camp Cope – How to Socialise & Make Friends (2018)
Run For Cover
From the moment you hear Georgia Maq sing, you know it’s something special. Between her unflinching lyricism and the unique quality of her voice, she’s the kind of artist whose work sucks you in immediately and lingers around in your brain long after the record has finished playing. And with Camp Cope, Georgia has applied that voice and her guitar to Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich’s spidery basslines and Sarah Thompson’s sturdy drumming to create one of the most singular, powerful punk bands of a generation. Their self-titled 2016 debut is great, and its even better 2018 followup How to Socialise & Make Friends shows a band who were still clearly on the upward swing. Whether Georgia is battling sexism on the #MeToo-era anthems “The Opener” and “The Face of God,” or mourning the death of her father on the stunning acoustic album closer “I’ve Got You,” she leaves the listener hanging on her every word.
13. Knocked Loose – A Different Shade of Blue (2019)
Pure Noise
As often happens when an underground style of music goes mainstream, when metalcore reached peak popularity in the 2000s, the radio-friendly, watered-down versions of it began to overshadow the rest. The genre was in need of a shake-up, a band who could remind the world what made metalcore so special in the first place, and with their sophomore album A Different Shade of Blue, Knocked Loose showed us all that they were the band for the job. They knew that good production and scream-along one-liners can go a long way, but unlike the pop-metalcore bands of the late 2000s, Knocked Loose sounded legitimately fucking scary. There’s an atmosphere and a darkness to A Different Shade of Blue that made Knocked Loose sound more menacing than a lot of their peers, and they also knew how to sound accessible without sacrificing their sheer force. With high-pitched lead screamer Bryan Garris and low-pitched backup growler Isaac Hale handling the bulk of the vocals, the closest thing to “clean” is when Every Time I Die’s Keith Buckley shows up to shout Hot Damn! style on “Forget Your Name.” Still, A Different Shade of Blue is full of parts that can nearly be described as “catchy.” And Knocked Loose do more than keep the flame burning for a long-established genre; they bring something new to the table as well. When this album came out in 2019, I suggested that one day it would be talked about right alongside the classic albums that influenced it. Just five years later, that already feels like an understatement.
12. Turnover – Peripheral Vision (2015)
Run For Cover
Drastically changing up your style as a young, rising band is a risk, but Peripheral Vision teaches us that making a beloved record never really comes down to style as much as it comes down to great songwriting. Turnover’s 2013 debut album Magnolia felt less like an introduction and more like a turning point; prior to that, the band had released an EP and a pivotal split with Citizen of melodic hardcore that took after the likes of Title Fight and Lifetime, and by the time they wrote Magnolia, they were going through lineup changes and they were stuck at a crossroads between where they were and where they wanted to be. They’d begun consuming a steady diet of dream pop and post-punk bands like The Cure, The Smiths, Wild Nothing, and Beach House, and Magnolia didn’t fully commit to their new interests or their previous ones. It seemed to put a damper on their hype rather than propel it. With a newly-solidified lineup and nothing to lose, Turnover went all in on their newfound love of dream pop/post-punk for Magnolia‘s followup Peripheral Vision, and they still had the driving backbone and the sappy sincerity of their emo/punk days that made the new album stand out as unique within all of those genres. And more importantly than any of that, Turnover wrote the 11 most impactful songs they’d ever written. Full of simple sentiments about love and loss and set to achingly sweet melodies, Peripheral Vision is a complete embodiment of the intensity, lust, and confusion that so often accompanies coming-of-age romance. And if you’re past that stage of your life, it can induce a whole lot of bittersweet nostalgia and an ever-so-slightly amount of cringe that’s mostly just endearing. It sounded drastically different than everything Turnover had released before it, but at this point, it functions more like a debut album than Magnolia did. It quickly became the band’s breakthrough record, and it set the tone for the next decade of Turnover’s career. As it approaches its 10th birthday, it stands out as an even more important and unique album than it was back then.
11. mewithoutYou – [Untitled] (2018)
Run For Cover
The shapeshifting mewithoutYou have made a lot of great music throughout their career, from the Fugazi-esque post-hardcore of their 2002 debut [A-B] Life to the Neutral Milk Hotel-esque indie folk of 2009’s It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All a Dream! It’s Alright, and beyond, but the peak of their career long remained 2004’s Catch For Us The Foxes and 2006’s Brother, Sister, two albums that blended art rock and post-hardcore in a way that we really haven’t ever heard before or since. After the artistic detours of It’s All Crazy and 2012’s Ten Stories, mewithoutYou started looping back around to their classic sound on 2015’s Pale Horses, and made a new leap forward with what became their final album, 2018’s [Untitled]. In a way, [Untitled] feels like the mewithoutYou album that so many of their fans had been waiting for since Brother, Sister. It captures everything about what made mewithoutYou a band like no other, and it pushed them to places they’d never gone before. It helped reaffirm that the people who believed in mewithoutYou were right all along, that this really was a special, powerful, innovative band, that they were more than part of a passing moment or a fleeting scene. [Untitled] hit just as hard in 2018 as the band’s classic records did 10-15 years earlier.
On [Untitled], the entire band tests their own limits, using the familiar tools they’d spent nearly two decades sharpening to create soundscapes unlike any of their others. Aaron Weiss uses every vocal trick he’s got — singing, speaking, shouting, screaming — and he’s at the top of his game on all of these songs. Both he and the rest of the band bring some of the most compelling melodies they’d ever written to this album, and Aaron’s lyrics are as vivid and complex as ever. It’s sad to see mewithoutYou break up after releasing such a monumental album, but it’s also a treat to watch them go out on such a high note. Too often we see bands lose steam towards the end and fizzle out; mewithoutYou did the opposite. They released an album that cemented their legacy in an even more substantial way than it had already been cemented.
10. Julien Baker – Sprained Ankle (2015)
6131
The first time we saw Julien Baker play, she was opening first of three for The National side project EL VY, and she was added to the show long after it sold out, so it was safe to say no one had bought their tickets to see her. Her debut album Sprained Ankle had just come out a few weeks earlier, and when Julien performed her then-little-known songs from that album, with nothing but her own guitar and voice, she silenced the crowd for her entire set, including hundreds of people who were likely hearing her for the very first time. It was instantly clear at that show that Julien and Sprained Ankle had a bright future ahead of them, and that’s exactly how things turned out. By the time Julien signed to the larger Matador Records and released the even more widely acclaimed Turn Out the Lights, Sprained Ankle already felt like a classic. Now, Julien regularly headlines bigger rooms than the one we saw her open for EL VY in (including headlining areas as a member of boygenius), and it’s all because of the doors Sprained Ankle opened. With her many covers and collaborations, she’s helped bridge the gap between ’90s emo, classic folk and country, modern indie, and more, and she has become a force of her own in the process. We’ve already seen several new artists emerge that cite Julien as an influence, and it’s not surprising at all. Julien’s music, especially on Sprained Ankle, has felt like a breath of fresh air within all of the aforementioned styles of music and beyond.
9. The Hotelier – Goodness (2016)
Tiny Engines
Because emo is often a youth-oriented genre, a lot of these bands get attention when they’re very young, and we end up seeing the good ones drastically evolve before our eyes. (Emo 101: Just because a band’s debut album is whiny pop punk, doesn’t mean they won’t release some tremendous art rock record in like five years.) And The Hotelier are one of those bands; each album was a gigantic leap from the last. Their debut was the generic-at-times, emo-ish pop punk of 2011’s It Never Goes Out, which was followed by the much stronger and much more unique Home, Like Noplace Is There in 2014. Home, Like Noplace Is There is their most widely-loved album, but for my money, their masterpiece is 2016’s Goodness, an album that transcends any specific subgenre and feels like a monumental album for underground rock overall. It’s a warm, atmospheric record with folk/post-rock interludes, vivid imagery, and the best songwriting and production of the band’s career. They already learned how to write soaring hooks on their debut, but on Goodness, they wove those hooks in with intricate arrangements and inventive song structures. It’s the age-old approach that’s been winning music nerds over since Pet Sounds — experimentalism with an underlying pop song, making for something that’s too weird for the radio to ever touch but as catchy as anything they do play. The Hotelier figured out how to take that art pop mindset, and apply it to the driving catharsis of punk and emo, and it resulted in a record that hits you in the mind, heart, and gut all at once.
8. American Football – LP3 (2019)
Polyvinyl
When American Football broke up in 2000, their 1999 debut album had hardly left any kind of noticeable dent at all, but today it is maybe the single most influential album on 2010s emo. Hundreds of bands copied it, though none could truly capture its charm… until American Football themselves. Their cult status grew until they finally reunited for live shows in 2014, polished the rust off with 2016’s LP2, and then made the best album of their career yet with 2019’s LP3. American Football helped pioneer a blend of math rock, post-rock, and emo that was a huge feat instrumentation-wise, but it wasn’t until starting his solo project Owen that frontman Mike Kinsella really learned how to sing and write lyrics and choruses that left the same impact on the heart that his noodly guitar playing left on the brain. When American Football reunited, he and the rest of the band (including new bassist Nate Kinsella, Mike’s cousin and longtime collaborator) began putting those two things together and they perfected it on LP3. The album still has the math rock signifiers that made American Football so unique and so influential, but LP3 succeeds because it isn’t trying to recreate any previous American Football album. American Football have now been a band in the 2010s and 2020s for longer than they were in the ’90s, and they’ve really figured out who they are now; they’re not just living off the nostalgia for who they were 20 years ago. LP3 is just as much a dream pop album as it is a post-rock/math rock/emo album. It’s the best-produced and most gorgeous sounding album the band ever made, and it sets no limits for what it means to be an “American Football album.” It brings in glockenspiel, a children’s choir, and high-profile guest vocalists from members of Paramore, Slowdive, and Land of Talk, whose voices are as essential to these songs as Mike Kinsella’s. LP3 may never hold the same cultural significance as LP1, but, artistically speaking, it’s a massive leap forward.
7. Title Fight – Hyperview (2015)
ANTI-
A lot of albums get called ahead of their time, but few earn it the way Title Fight’s Hyperview did. Even before they had a full-length album out, Title Fight were steering culture at every turn. Whenever they made a shift in a new direction, a whole slew of punk, emo, and hardcore bands found themselves trying to play catch-up, and Title Fight never seemed like they were trying to be the most innovative band of a generation; they were just making music that they loved and wanted to hear. With Hyperview–their last album before ceasing activity in early 2018–Title Fight pushed things a little further than a lot of their fans and followers were ready for. They shed almost all of their melodic hardcore skin and wholly embraced the influence of bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Hum, and Sonic Youth, coming out with an atmospheric, shoegazy, experimental rock album that wasn’t built for doing front-flips off of stages. When it came out, reactions were mixed, and fans sometimes seemed noticeably confused when they played the slower, hazier material at shows. But time has treated this album very well. Shoegaze is now bigger than ever, and a lot of the genre’s young, rising musicians cite Hyperview as an influence right alongside the genre’s ’90s classics. At this point, ask three Title Fight fans their favorite Title Fight album, and there’s a good chance you’ll get three different answers. Like every Title Fight album before it, the emotions conveyed on Hyperview are overwhelmingly sincere and the melodies are beyond satisfying. It’s just as perfect for the more tranquil moments of your life as Shed, Floral Green, and The Last Thing You Forget are for the riotous ones.
6. Jeff Rosenstock – WORRY. (2016)
SideOneDummy
Just a year and a half after re-introducing himself with his proper debut solo album We Cool?, former Bomb the Music Industry! and Arrogant Sons of Bitches leader Jeff Rosenstock made one of the best and most ambitious records of his 25+-year career with 2016’s WORRY. It’s a melting pot of fast-paced indie-punk, strummy acoustic guitars, shambolic bedroom pop, ska, hardcore, and more, with a multi-song suite on Side B inspired by The Beach Boys’ Smile. It’s a musical triumph and also an album filled with powerful sociopolitical messages. It came out less than a month before Trump was elected, and it took on topics like police brutality, gentrification, and capitalism, all delivered with the same down-to-earth honesty that Jeff’s more “personal” songs are (scare quotes because plenty of these songs are personal too). The musical and lyrical ideas on WORRY. are big, but Jeff just has this way of making everything he does seem spontaneous and humble. For all its heft, WORRY. flies by, and it’s got so many Jeff staples that it often feels like a greatest hits. Jeff’s one of those artists who’s always living in the moment and always making music that meets the moment, which WORRY. very much did. Eight years and three more fantastic albums later, that’s all still true and WORRY. hasn’t lost an ounce of its urgency.
5. PUP – Morbid Stuff (2019)
Little Dipper/Rise
The premise of making this list in 2024 is that it can be hard to compare a seven-month-old album to a nine-year-old album when making a decade list, but some albums really do make their mark in just a few months and Morbid Stuff was one of those albums. PUP had already been one of the leading voices in 2010s indie-pop-punk thanks to their first two albums, and when Morbid Stuff came out in April 2019, it blew both of its predecessors out of the water upon arrival. It delivers pretty much the same kind of fist-raising punk anthems as those two albums, just in a way that’s bigger, better, tighter, and smarter. PUP don’t really try to be the most startlingly original band in the world, but they put enough of their own spin on tried-and-true pop punk formulas that they end up sounding like no one else. And, throughout the 2010s, they were one of those bands who created a sound and keep honing it from album to album, getting exponentially better each time. Morbid Stuff was such a peak that PUP knew it was time to get weird and change it up on 2022’s great, often-underrated THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND, and that album only helped further solidify how special Morbid Stuff is. For a band that’s practically built on its own imperfections, Morbid Stuff is pretty damn close to perfect.
4. Paramore – After Laughter (2017)
Fueled by Ramen
Polished, super mainstream pop punk in the mid to late 2000s did not get a very good reputation, but Paramore were always a cut above the rest. And with their fifth album After Laughter, which dipped its toes into synthpop and new wave while still sounding like no other band in the world, they hit such a creative peak that even the most pop punk-averse music fans and critics had to admit they did something great. The album’s more “hip” signifiers made it more easily digestible for people who wince at the mention of “pop punk,” but After Laughter isn’t Paramore’s best record yet just because it’s quote-unquote “cooler.” Hayley Williams became a more compelling vocalist than ever on this record, and it’s got the band’s strongest songwriting yet. Hayley’s depressing lyrics were masked with bright, sugary melodies and infectious rhythms, which is often a trick that helps secure longevity, as it did for this album. The songs hook you on first listen, and the lyrical depth keeps you hanging around to further explore the emotional weight that they carry. Especially when you come out of nowhere and get super popular with your debut, as Paramore did back in 2005, the cliché is that you’re likely to fall off quick. But Paramore made their best album (so far!) 12 years later. It still feels like they’re only beginning.
3. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die – Harmlessness (2015)
Before Harmlessness, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die had released some promising EPs, a great but very imperfect full-length, and a divisive spoken word EP, and underwent a few lineup changes including the departure of lead vocalist Tom Diaz (who passed away in 2018). They were not exactly a band who seemed on the verge of releasing an all-time classic record, which is why it’s so interesting that that’s exactly what they did. Harmlessness was TWIABP’s first album for the larger Epitaph Records, but TWIABP took the same DIY approach as they took for everything else they did (with their own Chris Teti producing, mixing, and engineering), and still they came out with better songs and a greater sense of ambition than ever before. New lead vocalist David Bello fit in with the band’s sound perfectly, and he successfully tackled heavy topics like struggles with physical and mental health, while keyboardist/vocalist Katie Dvorak duetted with him on one of the emo revival’s greatest anti-sexual assault anthems, “January 10th, 2014.” Matching the emotional complexity was a musical backdrop that pulled from folk, post-rock, metal, indie rock, punk, emo, post-hardcore, and more, and made it look effortless as they bounced between all these different sounds. The album never really lulls, but like its predecessor, it peaks at the end. Whenever, If Ever had one long post-rocky song at the end; Harmlessness has two. Both are majorly affecting, though the best is “I Can Be Afraid of Anything.” When the music brightens up, and TWIABP yell “I really did dig my own hole / I’m climbing out,” we felt that.
2. Turnstile – Time & Space (2018)
Roadrunner
The “current moment in hardcore” obviously has a lot to do with the vast success of Turnstile’s Glow On, but that was not a success that happened overnight, and Turnstile themselves played a huge part in laying the stepping stones for their own big moment. Glow On may have been the big breakthrough, but its 2018 predecessor Time & Space was the tipping point. Like related band Trapped Under Ice, Turnstile started out as a heavy hardcore band, but even early on they were playing by their own rules. On their 2015 debut full-length Nonstop Feeling, one song is uncharacteristically melodic (“Blue By You”) and another is just basically one long mosh part (“Drop”). “They’re fearless, and they know themselves and they trust themselves,” said Brian McTernan, who produced that LP. As Turnstile were pushing forward, members also spent time in a variety of other bands, ranging from the straightedge youth crew-ish Mindset to the Revolution Summer-inspired Praise to the emo-ish Diamond Youth to aforementioned boundary-pushers Angel Du$t, and it felt like all of that came together on 2018’s highly inventive Time & Space. Big, chunky, alt-rock bangers like “Real Thing” and “Moon” are direct precursors to most of the fan faves from Glow On. “Big Smile” and “High Pressure” are rippers that feel equally indebted to Bad Brains and The Stooges. “Generator” fuses evil Slayer riffs with delightful handclaps. “Bomb” and “Disco” set the tone for the R&B and electronic-leaning elements of Glow On. “I Don’t Wanna Be Blind” repurposed ’90s post-hardcore for the soon-to-be-roaring ’20s. Deeper cuts like “Can’t Get Away” and “Right to Be” are just as effective as the album’s biggest singles. Throughout it all, Turnstile weave in elements of psychedelia, making Time & Space not just a rager but also a trip. It’s full of moments that are just as crowdpleasing as the more streamlined Glow On, but it’s also Turnstile’s weirdest record, and I mean that exclusively as a compliment. 5+ years on from its release, it’s full of moments that still feel ripe for discovery.
1. Foxing – Nearer My God (2018)
Triple Crown
When the “emo revival” started in the late 2000s, it was a way for a new wave of bands to take emo back to the underground and pull influence from bands like American Football, Cap’n Jazz, and Braid, rather than the pop rock bands who brought the genre to arenas in the mid 2000s. Eventually, though, a handful of bands in this new wave of underground emo bands started offering up a much more original take on the genre that looked forward rather than backwards, more “post-emo” than “emo revival.” Whatever you want to call it, it produced a lot of great music throughout this past decade, peaking — so far, at least — with Foxing’s stunning third album Nearer My God. Like most great albums, Nearer My God transcends its genre; there’s a good case to be made that this album shouldn’t qualify as “emo” at all. Nearer My God is to “emo revival” what OK Computer is to Britpop and grunge; the roots are there, but it takes those roots into nearly-undefinable territory. Like OK Computer did, Nearer My God pulls from all across the musical spectrum, and it brings tons of seemingly incongruous styles of music together in a way that somehow feels natural. And as much as you can draw comparisons to anything from M83 to TV on the Radio to The Blood Brothers to Frank Ocean, Nearer My God doesn’t sound like any band other than Foxing. They started out in a scene of bands who proudly wore their influences on their sleeves, but grew and came out with a sound that they can truly call their own. It is strikingly original, deeply experimental, and yet somehow it goes down like fine wine. It’s one of those albums where, no matter how many times I listen to it, I still can’t fully wrap my head around the idea that it was created by humans who walk the same earth as you and I.
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