Denton, Texas' Record Setter debuted as a "late-to-the-party Title Fight worship" band (their words) on 2014's Dim, but they gradually expanded their sound over the years, pushing it in all kinds of new directions on 2017's Purge and their 2019 split with Genius Christ and Sylvania Ave. But it's on their new album I Owe You Nothing -- their first for Topshelf -- where they really opened up their sound and their message. "Purge was this half-step, not being able to let go and say just what I want to say truly or fully," guitarist/vocalist Judy Mitchell told Ian Cohen in a recent Stereogum profile on the band. "With this one, I’m not doing that."

I Owe You Nothing does indeed feel like an album where absolutely nothing is held back. Judy raises her voice to a scream several times, and it sounds like it's not just for artistic reasons but also because the emotion in these songs is so raw and overwhelming. Musically, I Owe You Nothing weaves between harsh '90s-style screamo, mathy Midwest emo, climactic post-rock, hook-oriented 2010s emo revival, and more, and the songs all segue directly into each other. There's no way to listen to this album other than start to finish, and when you do, it's hard to imagine not feeling swept off your feet. It's one of those albums that just checks every box and does everything right. A majority of the musical influences on the album are 20-25 years old, but Record Setter make you feel like you're hearing them for the first time -- no small feat given the amount of '90s-style emo bands that cropped up over the past decade.

For an album that musically ties all kinds of different sounds together, it lyrically is a story of "separation," Judy said in that same Stereogum interview. She also expressed disappointment that people will probably "cast the whole album in this view of trans-ness or LGBT," as she does touch on themes of gender discovery/dysphoria throughout the album, but the songs are a lot more universal than that. They're full of pain and desperation and doubt and acceptance, and those feelings come across so intensely at every turn.

What do you call this - screamo? Hardcore? Maybe just call it utter fucking chaos. The Philly band's first EP for Touche Amore frontman Jeremy Bolm's Secret Voice label -- and quite possibly their best release yet -- opens with two tracks so pummeling it feels like all four members are racing to play faster than each other, yet they never lose focus. Then the EP does an about-face with the industrial rap of "2K" (ft. Archangel), a genre they tackle just as masterfully as punk, before wrapping up with two more fired-up rippers. The music feels built to send bodies flailing, and the lyrics are as pointed and direct as can be, blurring the lines between personal stories and systemic issues, and flipping a middle finger in the face of hypocrisy and oppression. ("Yt can grow tree on TV and never ever worry about no cases, how? And get praised as an entrepreneur! Wow!" goes one lyric on "Mathed Up.") These songs are full of purpose and messages that deserve to be heard, and every single word feels carefully chosen. It's also so noisy and obscured that you often have no idea what they're saying, but that feels intentional too. This type of glorious racket doesn't happen by accident.

Touche Amore celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album last year. It feels weird to say it, but they're basically veterans at this point, and while a lot of hardcore bands would be losing steam at this point, they keep pushing forward, constantly looking for something new to shake up their sound. For new album Lament, one of those somethings was producer Ross Robinson, who's worked on everything from post-hardcore classics like At the Drive-In's Relationship of Command, Glassjaw's Worship & Tribute, and The Blood Brothers' ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn, to The Cure's self-titled 2004 album, to like almost every major nu metal album. "This time around, we need to take a chance with the unfamiliar. Someone who would take us out of our comfort zone," frontman Jeremy Bolm said when they first announced the partnership. "Enter Ross Robinson."

In the four years since 2016's Stage Four (one of three Touche Amore albums that we included on our list of the 100 best punk & emo albums of the 2010s), guitarist Nick Steinhardt also perfected his pedal steel skills, and that instrument brings a twangy atmosphere to Lament that Touche Amore have never had before. Jeremy also seemed to approach his lyricism more freely than he had on recent albums, like Stage Four which found him processing the death of his mother and its 2013 predecessor Is Survived By which found him grappling with the idea of his own legacy. "There was a freedom that came with not tying myself to one specific thing," he recently told Emma Garland in an interview for Vice. "I’m not writing songs about my mother anymore, and I’m not writing songs about necessarily specific grief. I’m writing songs about what my life is and how it’s been changed since that record, or what’s happening in this world since that record."

His words on this album vary from introspective ("Lament") to imagery-inducing metaphors for love ("Come Heroine") to political ("Reminders") to a song that sounds like a diary entry set to music ("A Forecast"). And Jeremy's greater lyrical variety is matched by the most musically varied album Touche Amore have written yet. Jeremy continues to hone his singing voice while offering up plenty of his trademark screams, and some of his talented friends show up to widen the scope of the album's vocals too. Manchester Orchestra's Andy Hull provides dual lead vocals with Jeremy on the climactic alternative rock of "Limelight," while Julien Baker lends backing harmonies to the melodic punk of "Reminders" and Trapped Under Ice/Angel Du$t's Justice Tripp aids the throat-shredding post-hardcore of album opener "Come Heroine." Elsewhere on Lament, Touche work in everything from piano balladry ("A Forecast") to alt-country ("A Broadcast") to blastbeats ("Savoring"). It sounds all over the place on paper, but it doesn't come off that way at all when you listen. Touche Amore have a way of making everything they touch sound like Touche Amore; some of these songs could fit right in on the early records, most couldn't, and yet the result is a cohesive album that no other band could've written.

It's the best thing Infant Island have released by a mile and it's one of the most stunning albums to come out of the whole recent screamo revival yet. As on Infant Island's previously released music, Beneath pulls from chaotic screamo, shimmering post-rock, some more melodic post-hardcore/emo type stuff, and some absolutely vicious metallic stuff too. But Beneath also spreads its wings further than anything Infant Island have put out yet, with a deeper dedication to both Eno-esque ambient music ("Colossal Air," "Someplace Else") and crackling noise ("Signed In Blood"). Music like that is sometimes intentionally written as "background music," but Infant Island make those parts sound as suspenseful as their more accessible, in-your-face songs. They're sequenced in such a way that they act like bridges between the vocal-oriented songs, and they're never skippable; without them, the other songs wouldn't hit as hard. Beneath also pushes the various styles of music that Infant Island experiment with to their extremes, and it fuses these styles together more seamlessly than ever. The sludge/black metal hybrid of opener "Here We Are" might be the heaviest song Infant Island have released yet, while parts of "Stare Spells" are downright beautiful in a way this band only hinted at previously. And the songs on this album rarely stay in one place for long or fit neatly into individual subgenres. They'll do things like move from delicate post-rock to spastic screamo to Neurosis-y sludge metal in the span of two minutes (as they do on "Content"), and it never sounds forced or out of place. Infant Island have also upped their musicianship game (the drumming on this album is the not-so-secret-weapon) and the production blows away that of their debut. Sometimes screamo benefits from raw, lo-fi production, but this album sounds big and crystal-clear, and it only helps bring out the best in Infant Island's songs.

On Viewing, Stay Inside pretty much do it all. They've got the loose, Midwestern-style sounds, the tougher East Coast post-hardcore sounds, and some straight-up screamo. They've got sprawling, post-rocky parts. They've got the token acoustic closer (which, token or not, is one of the album's best songs). They've got the kind of polished production and scream/sung dual vocals that make them sound like they'd be the biggest breakout band of 2003, but they avoid the more negative traits of mainstream emo and still sound more closely tied to the indie/underground-centric '90s and '10s waves. They sound like they're playing to the people in the nosebleeds even if bands that sound like this in 2020 are more likely playing in the backs of bars, and they bare it all emotionally in the process. It's always a risk to put yourself out there and make a record this heartfelt and this vulnerable, but the risk is so worth it when it results in cathartic, life-affirming music like Viewing.

LA screamo band Nuvolascura released their great self-titled debut album in January 2019, and they're now back just a year and a half later with their sophomore album. Like the debut, they made this one with Jack Shirley, whose work with bands like Loma Prieta, Deafheaven, and State Faults makes him a great fit for Nuvolascura's heavy yet atmospheric/melodic screamo, and As We Suffer From Memory and Imagination only sounds bigger and better and tighter than its predecessor. Nuvolascura sound like a more confident band this time around, and they've really expanded their sound, with a greater emphasis on sprawling post-rock and tech-y math rock, but not at the sacrifice of their fast, aggressive sound (all of these songs clock in around just one or two minutes, except one that almost makes it to three). The album can be dark and discordant or bright and melodic, and often these quickly-shapeshifting songs incorporate two or more moods into their brief running times. The album's sequence is a big part of the appeal too -- there are standout tracks, but As We Suffer From Memory and Imagination functions best when it's heard as one big piece of music (and it only takes 21 minutes to hear it that way).

There's so much to this album -- ear-piercing screamo, anthemic post-hardcore, delicate post-rock, black metally fury, and more -- and Boneflower bring it all together in a way that feels simultaneously familiar and inventive. If you've ever wished Pianos Become the Teeth would make an album that had the post-rock/screamo of their early days and the soaring clean-sung hooks of their more recent material all at once, A(r)mour just might be the thing you're looking for.

No matter what's happening within screamo at any given moment, Envy are always a constant. The Japanese band have been around since the genre's inception in the '90s, and they remain one of the best and most influential bands. When bands like Thursday helped bring screamo to the American mainstream in the 2000s, Envy released a split with them. When Envy's influence was impossible to ignore on breakout 2010s metal bands like Deafheaven and emo bands like La Dispute, Deafheaven and La Dispute both brought them on tour. They're as musically relevant today as they were the day they released their 2001 classic All the Footprints You've Ever Left and the Fear Expecting Ahead, and their new music has continued to rival their classics. Their last album, 2015's Atheist's Cornea, rivaled any of the similar music coming out at that time, and now they're finally back with a followup to that album, and it's yet another triumph. Whether you're coming to this album as a longtime Envy fan or you've been pointed in its direction because you like the newer bands Envy influenced, The Fallen Crimson will deliver. Like its predecessor, it stands tall next to Envy's classics and it sounds as fresh and forward-thinking as anything happening today within screamo, emo, metal, post-rock, and beyond. It's got gorgeous, sweeping crescendos as well as moments of brute force. It's got almost as much of an emphasis on spoken word as it does on larynx-tearing shrieks. It's genuinely great music that succeeds outside of any context at all. Envy have remained an important, influential band by keeping their ears to the ground, welcoming new generations of fans and band-friends, and consistently making music that can be loved in the moment, without feeling like you need to "do your homework" on what makes them so important and influential. And with The Fallen Crimson, they've done it all over again.

Cordoba, Spain's Viva Belgrado pretty much arrived fully formed. By the time they released their 2014 debut album Flores, carne (which followed a demo and an EP), they had developed a European-style post-rock/screamo blend that was as well crafted as the classic bands they were influenced by. But on this year's Bellavista -- their third album and first in four years -- Viva Belgrado prove that they're not content to stay within the confines of screamo. They've still got some harsh, screamy parts and some explosive post-rock crescendos on this album, but as they themselves said in the track-by-track breakdown of the album that they gave Idioteq, La Dispute were a big influence this time around, and you can very much hear that band's style of shouted-word, proggy post-hardcore in this LP. It's a more dynamic record than the first two, and it's cleaner and more melodic while also being more experimental. It's hard to avoid making the La Dispute comparison, but Viva Belgrado fuse that type of sound with their pre-existing style to the point where Bellavista never really sounds like one other band in particular. The band's new approach also puts their lyrics more in the forefront than ever, and though I don't know what the Spanish band is singing (without reading the translated lyrics on Bandcamp), the language of the emotion they convey is universal.