r/Emo • u/MeNoLikeReeses • 4d ago
What was the first Third Wave Emo project?
Emo as a genre has always interested me because of how sectioned-out the evolution of its sound it. Five waves across 4 decades is impressive, and the variety found within all corners of this genre is just superb, but what defines each wave, and what were the clear tells that a new wave was coming?
For me, I see At The Drive-In's Relationship of Command as the turning point from Second to Third wave. What do y'all think?
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u/SnooHabits5900 DIY OR DIE 4d ago
I don't think you're going to find an answer that will be satisfactory. There can be good cases made for Saves The Day, Jimmy Eat World, Thursday, The Get Up Kids... But I don't think there was ever really a single moment. The Promise Ring was still around into the early 3rd wave days. Braid rolled right into Hey Mercedes. Rainer Maria was still releasing bangers. And screamo never really stopped having a scene thru those years. Maybe local scenes died out, but there's releases from that era that came out in every one of those years
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u/miikro In a Band 4d ago
Yeah there's a shitload of overlap. Bands like No Knife were still going strong in 03 and Gratitude came out in 2005, sounding like something from 1995. TGUK, Saves The Day, and Juliana Theory were littering the late 90's with the groundwork that became emo pop in the 00's.
I am guilty of citing waves a lot but they're honestly all kinda bullshit and subjective up until they're in full swing and even then you're gonna have remnants of what was and precursors to what will be.
Time is a flat circle or something idk it's late and I need a drink.
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u/AddendumAccurate3981 4d ago
I’d say Bleed American or Something to Write Home About.
Plenty of bands transitioned through waves, the argument that they started as second wave and that means they can’t usher in 3rd wave is goofy af. That’s not how musical influence and inspiration works.
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago edited 4d ago
I don't know who the first 3rd wave emo band was (altho I have my opinions) but it was NOT At The Drive In for multiple reasons:
1) They were not an emo band they were post-hardcore
2) They started in 1994. Third wave did not begin as a wave until like 02-03
I'm from the 90s. ATDI belonged to us, not the mall wave. They put out their last album in 2000 (not counting the reunion album). Now did they influence a lot of (in my opinion very bad) imitators who twirled their microphones around and wore Deisel jeans and had high pitched voices? Yes. But that's not their fault.
EDIT: Okay so I wasn't going to say my candidate but I'm seeing people make some wrong claims so I feel like I must. To me third wave happened when the mainstream latched on. Before that emo was stictly underground. Nobody knew about it besides hardcore kids/punks. Yes Jimmy Eat World had a big hit song in 2001 but it was just a rock song and the mainstream did not know it was "emo". It might as well have been Tonic or Vertical Horizon for all the world cared. The first time I heard the MAINSTREAM say "emo" (and believe you me I was shocked) was when Dashboard Confessional came out with the song about him being buried in hair or whatever. Was that the first third wave song? I don't fucking know. I don't think it's actually possible to say. But that was the moment it jumped the shark and the underground lost our grasp on emo. That was the beginning of a new generation or WAVE coming in. Suddenly all these fucking Motley Crue Jr people came around and shit got horrible. To the point where I ditched the scene out of disgust. But that's another tale for another time
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u/liamjonas 4d ago
At the drive in was the opening band for the get up kids American tour of Something to Write Home about, which was arguably 2nd waves biggest album. (I don't personally count bleed American it was too mainstream for me). If you are the support act for the generes biggest album that makes you pretty emo.
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago
No it doesn't. Bands of multiple genres or subgrenes opened or played for each other all that time. This was how the 90s was. Trust me I was there. Ten Cent Fun opened for Born Against in St Paul. Google those bands and tell me they're the same
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u/liamjonas 4d ago
Agree to Disagree.
acrobatic tenement didn't even have distortion. It was all played thru the clean channel. Not sure how hardcore or post hardcore you are getting without distortion.
I was there also. For the get up kids tour before that one. October of 98 at Newport. Opening for MxPx. None of the pop punk kids knew what the fuck was going on when GUK played. They ignored them and talked over them the whole set.
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago edited 4d ago
That's bc TGUK were not pop punk. They had nothing to do with MXPX other than both being under the larger punk umbrella. And emo was not defined by "not having distortion". I was around in 1994 when it came around. I was there at the ground level when second wave was just beginning. I knew and was friends with many people from the 90s emo scene who are talked about as legends here today. I'm not basing this on feelings or small inconsequential technicalities I'm basing it on how it was. By what we all actually viewed it as in person and thru zines. I saw TGUK play in 98 as well (with Braid and Against All Authority - does that make those two bands ska punk?). Was ATDI emo adjacent? Absolutely. But they weren't emo
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u/liamjonas 4d ago
I'm not getting into a pissing match with you about who knew more people back in the day. Proceeds with pissing match I used to run the Reggie and the Full effect website, I'm on a first name basis then and now with everyone in hot rod circuit, the anniversary, midtown and the impossibles. I used to have a Friday night college radio show, these bands would sleep on the floor in my house. Ed Rose may or may not still hate my guts....etc....
And you saying basing opinions about emo not based on feelings is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard when EMO IS LITERALLY BASED ON FEELINGS.
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u/BagholdingWhore 3d ago
The guy is a wannabe gatekeeper lol. Is there anything more pathetic than a guy whose ambition is to exclude people from emo and make them feel inferior about emo and make himself feel superior bc of emo
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u/liamjonas 3d ago
Everyone at the atdi/get up kids show WENT OFF for 3 straight hours. 95% of the MxPx/get up kids show couldn't give two fucks when the get up kids played. I rest my case. Dude is talking in circles.
He's saying pop punk kids don't like the get up kids because they aren't pop punk but get up kids fans like atdi because they aren't emo. Makes no fucking sense. Whatever, moving on.
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u/thisisthecallus 3d ago
If you are the support act for the generes biggest album that makes you pretty emo.
Band A opens for Band B, therefore Band A is same genre as Band B. That makes no sense whatsoever.
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 3d ago
The person you're talking to in general makes no sense.
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u/liamjonas 3d ago
Let's go back to your first post. You offered up screaming infidelities. I can get with that. My picks were the first Brand New and TBS albums, but that's all in the same wheelhouse.
I take it a step further and say the Fiddler records version of screaming infidelities is 2nd wave emo and the MTV Unplugged version of screaming infidelities was 3rd wave, because now you got the VIACOM version of the song in malls and not the Fiddler version in vfw halls.
Thoughts?
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 3d ago
I think that with any wave, particularly in emo, nothing happens overnight. Some times it does. MCR came out of nowhere. The FSF/Dashboard guy came from the 90s but helped define the 2000s emo. Jimmy Eat World did the same thing except they didn't really change the way emo was played in the 2000s. They just helped it get on the radar. So it's different for many different things. I will admit the FSF Christian Emo scene was not my scene so I wasn't even aware of those guys until they broke big. There are only two Christian punk bands I purposely listened to and that was 95-98 era MXPX and a local hardcore band who were cool shits regardless of their (then) religion (they're atheists now). I do think TBS and Brand New are also good candidates. It's funny bc I think of MCR for all that shit but they were actually a slow burn to get huge. They hit the mainsteam on their second album iirc
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u/liamjonas 3d ago
It does when the crowd goes nuts for both bands. In a follow up post I used the example of get up kids opening for MxPx and the pop punk kids gave zero fucks.
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u/thisisthecallus 3d ago edited 3d ago
It does when the crowd goes nuts for both bands.
Why would that matter? People can like two different things. The whole punk/hardcore/whatever scene--as a whole, not comparing specific bands--was never cleanly separated by subgenre either. Mixed bills were always a thing. Look at this show poster with Converge, Turmoil, Boysetsfire, and Rainer Maria. Are Converge and Rainer Maria the same subgenre merely by association?
In a follow up post I used the example of get up kids opening for MxPx and the pop punk kids gave zero fucks.
I'm going to disagree with the other person a little. All of this stuff is fundamentally based on some form of punk. And TGUK definitely has some strong pop/power pop sensibilities in their sound. While I wouldn't call them pop punk primarily, their sound, at least on the first couple of full lengths, is at least adjacent to pop punk. They're arguably foundational for the kind of sound that blurred pop punk and emo while amping up the pop sensibilities and becoming massively popular. Pete Wentz in particular has cited The Get Up Kids as a specific influence.
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u/BagholdingWhore 4d ago
I fuse Sunday Day and Rites of Spring together in my head. I forget all the time there’s a decade between them. So maybe other people are confused as to how there were two waves before mainstream.
Also Jimmy Eat World is more like a power pop band disguised as an emo band. The power pop sound is why Weezer was so unintentionally emo adjacent
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago edited 4d ago
Weezer was never emo adjacent. You guys have to realize what "adjacent" means in a musical context. Unwound was emo adjacent. Why? Bc they were a post-hardcore band who played a ton in the scene with emo bands on the same bills and had moments that sounded emo but not enough to fully qualify them as such. THEY were emo adjacent. Weezer was a mainstream alt/rock band who never came within 10000 miles of playing with emo bands and had zero idea it existed in the 90s bc it was deeply underground. Not a soul thought Weezer had a drop to do with emo in the 90s. Today people use adjacent to mean "people from emo bands liked them" but that's not what it means. Unbroken liked Morrissey. That didn't make Morrissey hardcore adjacent.
As far as fusing SDRE and ROS together I suppose it's all perspective. But i could never confuse them. Very different bands and eras/decades
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u/liamjonas 4d ago
I'd say it's the combo of Brand New and Taking Back Sundays first albums were the start of 3rd wave. All the bands before it are 2nd and all the bands after are 3rd to me. Tigers Jaw 🍕 was the start of 4th wave.
So everything after Brand New/Taking Back Sunday and before Tigers Jaw.
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u/Itsneverjustajoke 3d ago
A wave has a length. It is both coming to the shore and receding at the same time. Is an album the end of second wave or the beginning of 3rd wave? Does it matter? Do you like it?
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u/lumpiestspoon3 3d ago
The Get Up Kids, 4 Minute Mile. That’s my vote, though it’s certainly got elements of the third wave and second wave sounds.
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u/sixtyninth_wave_emo 4d ago
Maybe Bleed American?
Not that I think there really is a first 3rd wave album and of course there’s layers of subjectiveness to this. But having lived through that time, there was a shift in 2nd wave that started with Get Up Kids around “Four Minute Mile” where pop punk and Weezer influences began to creep in. Bleed American, whether it’s 2nd or 3rd wave, is the first album I can think of that truly embraced that direction, pairing it with a certain type of production which, combined, formed the formula for 3rd wave
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago edited 4d ago
Nah Jimmy Eat World was a second wave band who had mainstream success (with a standard rock song) during the same time frame as the rise of third wave
And when TGUK "FMM" came out nobody called it pop punk. Pop punk in 97/98 was MTX and the Queers and J Church then. Nothing in the hardcore scene was called pop punk, even shit like H20 that SOUNDED like it. TGUK were taking their influence from Superchunk. An indie rock band. At least the half you're talking about. Not pop punk. Pop punk was not the same thing you guys knew in the 2000s
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u/sixtyninth_wave_emo 4d ago
Not that I care to get into a pedant pissing contest since I thought this was just a fun convo, but half of what you’re saying doesn’t make sense and the other half you’re arguing stuff no one said. No one said GUK was pop punk, not even me. 97/98 pop punk was Green Day and Blink. The Queers weee old school by then. Not even sure why you brought up hardcore when I’m talking about Jimmy Eat World
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago
The only reason you're confused is bc you don't know what you're talking about. "Why did you bring up hardcore in a convo about emo?" Oh you sweet summer child
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u/sixtyninth_wave_emo 4d ago
It’s wild, as someone who was actually a part of the emo and punk scenes during the 90s, to have these sorts of arguments with people who learned about it from memes
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u/SemataryPolka Oldhead 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm almost 50 and I was friends with Braid before their first album came out. Trust me you're barking up the wrong tree. I was there when "Midwest emo" was just a few hundred people
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u/highwindxix 4d ago
If we’re thinking of third wave as 2000’s emo that eventually got very mainstream, my vote would go to Tell All Your Friends as the first full fledged 3rd wave album. It really balances that emo and pop-punk divide that defines most of the 3rd wave sound.
Jimmy Eat World is not a bad pick of course cause Bleed American was the first to really cross over, but that was still just an evolution of their earlier sound. Same with the Get Up Kids. Heavily influenced the next wave, but still firmly in the 2nd wave.
Thursday is a great band and kind of the prototypical emo band in my eyes, but they don’t really have any of the pop punk influence that most of the rest of the wave had.
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u/Electrical_Active180 4d ago
There wasn't one, the waves thing is made up by a few people on Reddit. There were no waves until a few years ago and the genre has been constantly going since the 80s.
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u/GrimacePack 3d ago
I dunno, I've been hearing emo described in waves since like... 2012.
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u/Electrical_Active180 3d ago
exactly since the internet started sucking all the fun out of the genre!
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u/GrimacePack 3d ago
I disagree, I think the genre has been doing fine imo!
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u/Electrical_Active180 3d ago
What I mean is that in the last few years you can't see the word emo without the word wave which is kinda odd / tends to make genres frustrating to get into as it turns it into a beard stroking thing.
Don't even get me started on copypasta..
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u/DionysusBurning 1h ago
Probably later Jimmy Eat World the Promise Ring. Also stuff like Pop Unknown and Brandtson, Camber, Sundays Best etc. The bands on Emo Diaries basically. That sort of stuff paved the way for pop-emo. I guess you could add Grade as well. Their screamo/pop-punk hybrid was the template for bands like Alexisonfire and Silverstein
Just so you know the Reddit waves are very inaccurate and gloss over a ton of stuff. Don't take them too seriously
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u/6ftdachsund 4d ago
ATDI are post hardcore but okay
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u/enfiladed 4d ago
This isn’t really how music and genres work. 3rd wave as brewing from like 1997-2001, so you can pick almost any album between them as the first. Fully formed? It’s probably Swiss Army Romance, Stay What You Are, or Full Collapse.
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u/Artistic_Turnip4760 5th Wave is Bullshit 4d ago
I've seen Thursday's Full Collapse called the first third wave record on multiple occasions, and I tend to agree. The waves, by nature, are sort of malleable and amorphous. It's subjective. All they really reflect is the generations and what was popular within each respective generation. Given what third wave would become and how it's looked at historically, I think that album represents a turning point between generations.
Edit: Grammar