10 Modern Rock Bands You Need To Listen To

Out of all the tired tropes of the '00s rock scene, emo didn't deserve to go out the way it did. As much as bands like American Football and Sunny Day Real Estate helped lay the groundwork for it, the entire genre of emo became much more of an insult than anything else towards the mid '00s, and quickly went out of style once My Chemical Romance called it quits. It's never easy to pick up the pieces, but we do have Spanish Love Songs to show us how much we can grow.

Then again, it's hard to even categorize something like this as necessarily emo at all. From the sound of something like Kick or even Beachfront Property, the sound seems more in tune with pop punk than anything else, only with the dramatic heft pushed all the way up. You don't necessarily need to be a rocket scientist to figure out why something like Routine Pain or Self Destruction (as a sensible career choice) isn't going to be the sunniest of song topics.

Aside from the dour subject matter, this band exhibits something that most emo bands couldn't muster: confidence. Even though the times look rough ahead and are only going to get rougher going forward, these Midwest heroes are putting one foot in front of the other and are determined to not let it beat them. After all, it didn't kill us, so it must be making us stronger.