Понедельник 15 Окт 2007, 17:00
3 different names are used around the world for the same kind of music:
A third-wavish-emo and screamo influenced post hardcore
If you didn't understand that , I'm talking about the music of the following bands:
A Change of Pace, A Day to Remember, A Static lullaby, A Thorn for Every Heart, Behind Crimson Eyes, Bleed the Dream, Chasing Victory, Days in Grief, Dear Whoever, Emanuel, Emery, Fire In The Attic, Flee The Seen, From First to Last, Funeral For a Friend, Greeley Estates, Hand to Hand, Lorene Drive, lovehatehero, Our Last Night, Saosin, Silverstein, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Secret Lives of the Freemasons, Senses Fail, The Hurt Process, The Beautiful Mistake, Waterdown, With Broken Wings, Yesterday's Rising
here is what I think about each term:
post hardcore: This is the most technically correct name, all those bands are really post hardcore, but it is not very useful because there are many other bands that are post hardcore and don't sound like them for example: Quicksand and Fugazi (Read about post hardcore here)
What I want to say is that even if it's correct, the post hardcore term is very broad and not very useful to tag all those bands because they have something in common that the other post hardcore bands don't : the third-wavish-emo part. They are similar enough to each other to deserve a more specific tag. It's like saying that Nirvana music is rock, yeah it's rock but…
emocore: This term was also used for the first wave emo bands(Native Nod, Rites of Spring, Moss Icon, etc , etc.) were called.
I personally like it, I like to think about it as an abbreviation of "third-wave-emoish-post-hardcore". besides, rites of spring and the others already have the emo and the more lengthy emotional hardcore punk tag :)
screamo: This is how originally this kind of music was marketed by the record labels, the problem is that screamo is also a different sub-genre that includes bands like: I Would Set Myself On Fire For You,Envy, saetia, The Kodan Armada,Circle Takes the Square etc ,etc. While they have some similitudes, overall both sub-genres have different musical characteristics.
So, who uses emocore, who screamo and who post hardcore for this kind of music?
I did some playing with google trends and found some interesting stuff. first of all I will assume that all the google searches about those terms are all referring to this kind of music, and not for the other uses ( emocore as emotional hardcore punk, screamo as the music of saetia or post hardcore as music of Fugazi). I think it's a more or less good approximation because it should have much more searches for that meaning than for the others.
Google Trends Graphs
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/5926/byposthardcioreie8.png
View it in Google Trends
http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/192/screamoemocoreposthardceb0.png
View It In Google Trends
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/7226/byemocorexq9.png
View It In Google Trends
Read here about what normalized means
Analysis
The majority of countries and cities have screamo as their top term with some exceptions where emocore is the top searched term. The screamo term is more or less evenly distributed around the world so I can't easyly find any tendencies for its use, mmmm maybe there is small tendency for not being used in non english speking europe.
There isn't a single country, city or language where post hardcore is the top term. This term is mostly used in english speaking countries like USA, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (view the first graph), my guess is that it's being used by people who know what the other meaning for screamo is. You can find many of that kind of people here in last.fm that would explain why many bands have this tag as their main one, specially the smaller or newer ones that are not "contaminated" by the "mainstream knowledge". you can see this trend in bands like Dear Whoever and Lovehatehero
emocore: there is something very interesting with this term, while the english speaking world appears to completely ignore it, it's the main term for many other languages: Portuguese, German, French, Dutch and Italian and it comes second after screamo in spanish and Polish. overall can be said that it's mostly used in south america, being the top term in brazil and colombia, and in non-english-speaking europe, it's the most used term in countries like bulgaria, germany , switzerland and rusia. This can be also be seen in last.fm if you visit german and russian bands that play this music for example: Океан Моей Надежды and Radio Cambodia for russians and Waterdown and Fire in the Attic for the germans.
As a kind of conclusion: Screamo is the most used term, it's used for all over the world,with less use in non-english speaking europe. emocore, the second most used term, used in latin america, rusia and europe with the exception of united kindgdom. and Post Hardcore is used by a relative small group of people in english speaking countries.
Google trends didn't provided info about other important countries like midwest countries, china ,india and japan. if you know how this kind of music is mainly called there,please comment below.
Sorry for any English mistake or forced grammar structure that I may have :)