Quick Site Update 1/4/26

Hey everyone! I’ve got a few updates from the website to share with you all.

-The Shape of Screamo to Come, all fourteen entries and a link to the playlist, are now up in the Deep Dives section! If you want a primer on early Screamo and its influences, read up on it. I’ll be posting the rest of the Screamo series stuff in the coming days and weeks.

-I’ve added a Playlists tab, with the 2025 playlists already up. Stay tuned for some more awesome mixes from both myself and Mrs. Emporium.

-I’ve added a search function to the site! I know some of the information can be overwhelming, so I’m looking to improve ways to find and navigate the site. For now, search for stuff you like.

That’s it for now! I’ll keep you all updated as the year goes on, but archiving is my main responsibility as of now. See you all soon!

2025 Review, 2026 Preview

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s been a remarkable year for the genre and for Emo Emporium! With each passing year, I keep fooling myself into thinking this project is a small side-hobby of mine. However, at the onset of the year, I declared 2025 the Year of Screamo, headlined by my deep dive series Establishing Screamo Canon: From Chaos to Catharsis (there will be more news on this later). This series was ambitiously intended to comprehensively cover the history of the genre from its proto-origins in the early 90s all the way til 2015, but I’m quite proud that I managed to cover the entirety of the 90s. The series will continue, even if the Year of Screamo has come to an end, but so much more occurred during 2025.

The very existence of The Year of Screamo is credited to the outstanding Screamo Revival of the 2020s, and 2025 was no different! An epic cavalcade of Screamo releases defined this year, with everyone from established vets to debuting artists crafting banger and banger after banger. I didn’t even get a chance to touch on Life, who released an impossible, mindbending eight (!!!) studio albums and four EPs just this calendar year. Don’t get me wrong, Emo had a banner year without its Screamo counterpart backing it up, but I wouldn’t have rated over 90 releases had Screamo not taken up a huge bulk.

I also had the incredible opportunity to interview John Galm, and even if it took me A LOT longer than I wanted to get it up, I managed to put it on the website. Oh, and the website! I changed this from a social media-exclusive project into something that I intend to live online forever. I’m DIYing everything as I go and getting this website up and running (even if it’s still technically under construction), so I appreciate all the patience with this.

2026 is teeming with infinite possibilities for Emo Emporium, so I wanted to outline a few plans and goals for the upcoming year:

-My aforementioned interview was a transformative experience for me, and I’m ready to pursue this further! If you’re in a band or otherwise a member of this community, please head over to the homepage of emoemporium.net and fill out the contact form. I’d love to do an interview with anyone, from Emo legends to local heroes, so don’t be shy!

-The website is continuing to grow, with the front page having undergone some much-needed construction. I’ve archived a good amount of my content, but I’m not quite done yet. I’m going to be transferring the Establishing Screamo Canon stuff to the site, along with my tier list ratings for 2023 and 2024. Speaking of which,

-2023 seems like such a magical year for the genre, and it’s reflected by my tier list ratings from that year. Because I want to relive that magic (and see if this stuff still holds up after expanding my sonic palette a bunch since then), I’m going to be doing a 2023 Tier List Rerate! As I post the archival content to the website, I’ll be sharing some of my changed opinions and other favorites from the year, since I wasn’t even on social media when I first posted these!

-Some additional website additions include a Documents tab, chronicling Mrs. Emporium and I’s Emo journey together through pictures and videos, a playlist tab to house all of the playlists and mixtapes I’ve created, and a few other surprises that I’m excited to talk about when the time is right.

I’m always open to suggestions, improvements, questions and inquiries of any kind. Emo is great because it’s a community rooted in vulnerability and safety, and we should all be able to seek refuge in each other. Even if you just want to shamelessly plug your music, I’ll more-than-likely give it a listen - Emo is my life, after all. See you all next year!

Best Friends Forever ‘25 - Recap and My Emo Journey

Although my peripheral musical interests always included Emo, it wasn’t until recently that I decided to truly explore the genre, from its origins to its modern iterations. It all began with compiling Alex’s Emo Emporium, a playlist designed to track all the cool artists I was discovering and to sample some of their tastier tracks. Many of these artists were classic 90s Emo, such as Penfold, Mineral, Knapsack and Texas is the Reason, each foundational to the genre in their own ways. Others were Emo Revival juggernauts who had simply passed me by, such as Empire! Empire!, Snowing and Tigers Jaw.

Around the same time, I was delving into Fifth Wave Emo, with passionate bands like awakebutstillinbed, February and Crochet catching my attention. I would go on to begin my end-of-year tier list project, where I rate all the releases I’ve listened to from the past year and rate them within my personal tier system.

It was at this point that I would don the name Emo Emporium and begin posting my content online. With my interest in the genre at an all-time high, I discovered many fantastic releases that took place during Emo’s maligned 3rd Wave, so I set out to do a ten-part project to Recontextualize Third Wave Emo from an Underground / DIY Perspective. I covered releases from artists such as Bear vs. Shark, Cursive, The Appleseed Cast and more, singing the praises of their authentic Emo soundscapes.

Years later, Best Friends Forever Fest 2025 was announced, and the lineup was a perfect representation of Emo’s evolution. However, it was also a lineup tailor-made for Emo Emporium, featuring legendary artists that I thought I’d missed out on. Mrs. Emporium and I took the journey into the glittering desert landscape of Las Vegas for a truly unforgettable weekend.

The sets I experienced were truly incredible, with many bands turning back the clocks to their absolute primes. All the bands I already mentioned in this piece played phenomenally, with particular mention to Penfold and awakebutstillinbed for melting my brain. Additionally, sets from the more popular artists like Minus the Bear, Rilo Kiley, Jimmy Eat World and Marietta were sensational with maximum audience interaction.

Speaking of, it should be no surprise that at Best Friends Forever Fest, the friends we made along the way were probably the best part. A diverse audience, from absolute youngins to the true vets of the genre, crowded the Las Vegas Downtown Event Center to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere. The moshing and dancing started bright and early at 12 pm and never relented, with the energy somehow increasing as the weekend went on. Notably, almost every band had some crowd surfing going on during their sets, with greats like Jenny Lewis surprised to see such surfing in the desert.

Was the event perfect? Of course not, but I don’t want to get bogged down on the minuscule negatives when the overall experience was so tremendous. The artists were all sweethearts and excited to be at the festival as fans as much as they were as performers. But with all the historic comebacks, killer sets and friendly atmosphere, the greatest thing this fest did was celebrate Emo as a whole. My goal as Emo Emporium is to spread the gospel of this amazing genre to the masses, stemming from my desire to strengthen the community. With that goal in mind, I’d say Best Friends Forever 2025 knocked it out of the park and deepened the unfelt connection we all feel as Emos.