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!
