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! Alternatively, you may use the below search function to find anything you might be interested in reading about within the series. Please note that when you click one of the following links, you will have to scroll past the welcome and navigation sections to access the content.

Emo Emporium 2/28/25 Emo Emporium 2/28/25

December / Puritan - A Split Record | Connective Tissue 1996

December

(Bethlehem, PA)

Jeremy (Vocals)
Seth (Guitar)
Joe (Guitar)
Dan (Bass)
Matt (Drums)

Puritan

(State College, PA)

Chad Pfeiffer
Demian Fenton
Doug Savour
Tyler Lotz
Vijay Hariharan

Basic Info:

Release Date: 1996
Label: Giving Tree Records
Runtime: 9:31
-December: 4:09
-Puritan: 5:22
Tracks: 4
-December: 2
-Puritan: 2

Genres, Influences and Characteristics:

Screamo, Emoviolence, Metalcore, Dissonant, Aggressive, Dynamic, Noisy

Points on the Timeline:

December’s only known material is on this split, two songs that add up to a little more than four minutes. Meanwhile, Puritan had a rewarding year with a demo and two splits released. However, they’d only release an EP in 1997 before calling it quits.

Shapes in the Sound:

Two similar bands whose style is a cross between the emotive dynamism of Screamo and the more extreme side of Emoviolence, combined with some truly Metalcore chugging riffs. The screams from both bands on this quick split are gnarly and high-pitched while the music is a constant tug-of-war between wailing, dissonant guitar and tense moments of quiet, just waiting for the insanity to ensue.

Threads in the Tapestry:

Emoviolence was just emerging during this year, and this split put a heaping teaspoon of Pennsylvania in the mix, with both bands only within a couple hours’ drive from each other. Although this split didn’t singlehandedly put the state on the map as a Screamo hotbed, it does showcase 10 invaluable minutes of Emoviolence history.

Emo Emporium 2/26/25 Emo Emporium 2/26/25

Puritan / Reversal of Man | Connective Tissue 1996

Puritan:

(State College, PA)

Chad PfeifferDemian Fenton
Doug Savour
Tyler Lotz
Vijay Hariharan

Reversal of Man:

(Tampa, FL)

Matt Coplon (Vocals)
Jasen Weitekamp (Guitar)
Jason Crittenden (Guitar)
Jeff Howe (Bass, Vocals)
John Willey (Drums)

Basic Info:

Release Date: 1996
Label: King of the Monsters Records
Runtime: 34:07
-Puritan: 19:07
-Reversal of Man: 15:00
Tracks: 11
-Puritan: 5
-Reversal of Man: 6

Genres, Influences and Characteristics:

Screamo, Emoviolence, Noise Rock, Dissonant, Chaotic

Points on the Timeline:

At the time of release, Puritan was a brand new band with perhaps only a two-song tour demo released to their name. Reversal of Man, on the other hand, had already established themselves the year before across three releases and seven songs. Both artists would release another split this very same year.

Shapes in the Sound:

This split brings two very similar, very violence-oriented bands together, showcasing emotive hardcore’s evolution into Screamo and Emoviolence. Puritan’s punishing tracks emphasize the disparity between dissonance and melody with slower, discordant madness that changes to rapid-fire Emoviolence. By comparison, Reversal of Man is a bit more straightforward in their approach, but every bit of noisiness, dissonance, emotion and dynamism is present. Interestingly, they close their half out with the opener of their s/t EP of the same year, though I’m not sure which came out first.

Threads in the Tapestry:

With Emoviolence (and Screamo as a whole) in its infancy, these two burgeoning artists reached over 1,000 miles across the Atlantic to collaborate on this harrowing full-length split. While neither these tracks nor this split in general was revolutionary in the genre, this release further cemented genre conventions like liberal use of dissonance, quiet-loud dynamics and Powerviolence-like tempo switches.