10 Albums That Will Make You Love Emo

For all of the glamour that comes with the genre, people tend to forget how abrasive emo could be at the best of times. It still had its heart on its sleeve in their songs, but the pain was a lot more visceral, with songs that featured a lot more screamed vocals than what you'd expect out of a band like Weezer. Emo would take years before it had its makeover, but Patient Zero for the genre actually starts all the way back in the '80s.

In the middle of the DC hardcore scene, Rites of Spring emerged with the building blocks of what would become emo music, with the punk rock chops to match. If you go through songs like Spring or By Design, you're going to hear the same kind of screams that you would find on an emo record, only filtered through the likes of bands like Minor Threat or the Bad Brains a few years before.

For as much as this holds together as an emo album, it was never really thought of that way, with the band themselves just making another record that could find some rotation within the post hardcore scene. Rites of Spring might not have self identified as an emo band when they started, but all of the building blocks are right there, just waiting to be put into the proper place.