Emo revival

Bands of the emo revival are predominately influenced by acts from the Midwest emo scene of the 1990s and early 2000s; according to Ultimate Guitar staff writer Maria Pro, the terms second-wave emo and Midwest emo are used interchangeably to describe that time period's scene. Revival bands often display a "DIY sound" and lyrical themes ranging from nostalgia to adulthood. Pro, however, further writes that the revival only borrowed from the second wave in terms of aesthetics; sonically, it featured a distinct fusion of math rock, post-hardcore and pop punk. ==History==

Midwest emo revival were one of the bigger players in the emo revival. While third-wave emo was reaching its commercial peak in the mid-to late 2000s by embracing the sounds of mainstream radio music, fourth-wave emo's forerunners began taking influence from the second-wave Midwest emo scene. The fourth wave was spearheaded by the Pennsylvania-based groups Tigers Jaw, Snowing and Algernon Cadwallader and the English band TTNG. A 2018 Stereogum article cited Algernon Cadwallader's 2008 LP Some Kind Of Cadwallader as the emo revival's watershed release, while a 2020 article by Junkee called Tigers Jaw's 2008 self-titled second album "a true landmark release for the era". and Dowsing. Fourth-wave emo had become a fully-realised movement by 2011. Balance and Composure, and mewithoutYou. The same year, Huntsville-based Camping in Alaska released their debut album, please be nice, which became a cult classic with the success of "c u in da ballpit" online. Spin named the Hotelier's second album Home, Like Noplace Is There (2014) as the best album of fourth wave emo, opining that it "made it undeniably clear that the most thoughtful, the most progressive and the most exciting thing in indie right now was happening right here". In particular, the Wonder Years, Jeff Rosenstock, Charly Bliss and PUP were prominent acts during emo's fourth wave, who sonically were closer to pop punk. soft grunge merges elements of 1990s-style emo and grunge. Acts in the genre often embrace elements from a diverse array of styles including pop punk, alternative rock, shoegaze, indie rock and post-hardcore. Lyrics in the genre are often emotional, accompanied by a "brooding" vocal style, as well as the fuzz effect. Soft grunge began when bands from the late 2000s hardcore punk scene began making music inspired by 1990s emo and post-hardcore groups like Rival Schools and the Promise Ring as well as early 1990s alternative rock groups like the Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. In the early 2010s, the first wave of bands in the genre emerged, largely based around Run for Cover Records, including Adventures, Balance and Composure, Basement, Citizen, Pity Sex, Superheaven and Turnover. The album was widely influential, inspiring many bands to pursue a similar sound and reshaping Run for Cover into a label renowned for its grunge influence. Often, albums were produced by Will Yip. Some groups in this early era of the genre were made up of former easycore musicians, who shifted their sound into soft grunge. This included Citizen, In This for Fun who became Basement Turnover's second album Peripheral Vision merged the genre with elements of dream pop and shoegaze. That year, many North American Defend Pop Punk Era acts shifted their sound in favor of soft grunge, becoming one of the most prominent sounds in the pop punk scene during the mid-2010s. In 2016, some prominent pioneers of the genre began to shift their sound closer to pop rock, particularly Balance and Composure on Light We Made and Basement on Promise Everything, with Citizen also taking a more commericial sound on As You Please (2017). Other acts in the genre from this time included Major League, Movements and Teenage Wrist. Decline By the middle of the decade many bands had begun experimenting considerably with their sound, creating music less indebted to the 1990s emo bands that defined the fourth wave's early years and instead morphing the style towards what many critics began to call post-emo. As early as 2015, Vice writer Ian Cohen referenced the end of the emo revival and the beginning of the post-emo era with the release of the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die's second album Harmlessness, while BrooklynVegan writer Andrew Sacher recalled the same sentiment retrospectively in 2021 about Foxing's 2018 third album Nearer My God. By the end of the decade many of the most influential bands in fourth wave emo had disbanded: Modern Baseball in 2017, Title Fight in 2018 and Balance and Composure in 2019. mewithoutYou originally announced their break in 2019, after a final 2020 tour, however this tour was postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic and the band eventually broke up in 2022. == Influence ==

's album Nearer My God (2018) helped pioneer the sound of fifth wave emo. The underground success of fourth wave emo influenced the rise of the emo rap genre, which received significant mainstream success in the late 2010s with artists like Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert and Juice Wrld. One of the earliest pioneers of this sound was former Tigers Jaw guitarist and vocalist Adam McIlwee, who began the solo project Wicca Phase Springs Eternal and formed the influential emo rap collective GothBoiClique. Following the revival era in the early 2010s, a number of new bands emerged in the emo genre which have often been grouped into a distinct wave starting from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. The Ringer writer Ian Cohen states fifth wave emo began as early as 2017 and that these emo groups were influenced by bands such as Crying and the Brave Little Abacus. This fifth wave of emo maintained many of the stylistic elements of the revival era, but also began to incorporate sounds from other genres such as jazz and electronic music. Notable fifth-wave artists include Home Is Where, Dogleg, Glass Beach, Origami Angel, Pool Kids and Awakebutstillinbed. By 2024, this title was being attributed to See Through Person and Ben Quad on their album ''I'm Scared That's All There Is'' (2022), and was being used as a self-identifer by Kerosene Heights, to reference their revival of the very early emo revival sound Algernon Cadwallader and Glocca Morra. By 2023, remaining fourth waves emo bands like Citizen, the Hotelier, Foxing and the Wonder Years began touring for the tenth anniversaries of their most influential records and receiving renewed critical acclaim. During 2025, many bands who had been involved in the emo revival pushed their sound to be more aggressive and political. Algernon Cadwallader did so on their fourth album Trying Not to Have a Thought, which criticised anti-homeless architecture and the 1985 MOVE bombing; The World Is a Beautiful Place did so on Dreams of Being Dust, which discussed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; and La Dispute did on No One Was Driving the Car which discussed the climate crisis. == Criticism ==

The term "emo revival" has been the cause of controversy. Numerous artists and journalists have stated that it is not a revival at all and that, as a result of increasing usage of the Internet to discover music, people have stopped paying attention to locale-based underground emo. In 2013, Evan Weiss stated, "It's funny that people are only noticing it now because I feel like that revival has been happening for the last six years [...] It doesn't seem new to me, but if it's new to them, let them enjoy it." During the emo revival, music scholars began to consider emo music's relationship to misogyny and sexism. The emo revival was also notable for revelations of sexual harassment and assault committed by members of emo bands, such as Brand New, leading to a wider conversation about sexism within emo scenes. ==References==