Hello, everyone! Welcome to the hub for my Deep Dive project Establishing Screamo Canon: From Chaos to Catharsis! 2025 was the Year of Screamo and, while I didn’t quite get to my goal of covering Screamo from the 90s through 2015, getting through the 90s wound up being a Herculean feat in and of itself. I’m quite proud of this accomplishment! The series will continue indefinitely as I have time for it, but getting it up onto the website was very important. Please refer to the Overview post for more information about the series and the various sub-series within.
Below you can sort by subseries or via a tag cloud, weighing the most commonly-used tags such as artists, release years, record labels, locations, genres and even descriptors! Please keep an eye on this as the series continues!
- Emoviolence
- 1999
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- Noise Rock
- Powerviolence
- Summersault Records
Heroin - Heroin | Holy Grails 1997
The Artifact:
1/14/1997
Gravity Records
Runtime: 47:04
Tracks: 19
Artifact Characteristics:
Post-Hardcore, Proto-Screamo, Noise Rock, Hardcore Punk, Emocore, Raw, Intense
Artifact Archeologists
Matt Anderson (Vocals)
Scott Bartoloni (Guitar)
Ron Johnson (Bass)
Aaron Montaigne (Drums)
Artifact Contents:
Every track from All About Heroin
Every track from their 1992 s/t
Every track from their 1993 s/t
Three original tracks
Artifact Echoes:
Legends of early 90s Proto-Screamo and one of the original bands to explore this sonic space, Heroin took the power and fury of Hardcore, illuminated it with the melody and dynamism of Emocore and added in their own Post-Hardcore fixings to craft a noisy and raw discography. The singer’s shouted screams inject the music with even more immediacy and emotion, the guitarist didorients with breakneck chord progressions and heaps of noisy dissonance; the bass packs with it a sense of danger and the drumming is frantic and chaotic, effectively putting the formula in a blender. These pieces came together to from the early blueprints of the genre.
Artifact Legacy:
Listening through this compilation album showcases the band's evolution over the two years they were active, tracking their increased use of melody, dissonance and intensity. In addition to pioneering this genre and shaking up the early 90s Hardcore scene, Heroin's direct influences reached so many early Screamo bands, especially to the influential and genre-defining Gravity Records rostermates. Their drummer would form Antioch Arrow shortly after this band broke up, adding even more chaos and unease to the developing genre. However, that experimental edge was first put to use in Heroin.
Artifact Value:
Gravity Records released this comp in 1997 with several versions, allegedly including a rainbow pressing. All four versions I could find seem to be relatively inexpensive, with the price likely lowering a few years ago after Heroin released a new compilation album.