Mathematical screaming: A playlist of songs that fuse the related genres of screamo & math­rock

Although this fact is somewhat more obscure in recent times, it is true that math­rock & screamo (screamo is sometimes also known as “skramz”; the two are synonymous) are closely related as genres. Math­rock is the somewhat older cousin: genuine “math­rock” music emerged some time in the late 1980s, the bastard child of hardcore punk (or rather, post-hardcore) and a… disputed second parent, who was probably related to “prog rock” or similar. Screamo, on the other hand, is somewhat younger, emerging roughly a half-decade later, within the first half of the 1990s. Screamo, too, is closely related to post-hardcore, although the relationship is even tighter, as screamo is no bastard child; most consider screamo to be a proper subgenre of post-hardcore.

Arguably, screamo & math­rock grew apart as they matured. Screamo has tended to fuse with elements of post-rock (heightening its melodrama & its already complex/unusual song structures) and elements of metal-derived genres like black metal, metalcore, &c. (heightening its brutality). Meanwhile, math­rock became even more instrumentally-focused — with very many math­rock acts lacking vocals entirely — and, in some cases, has mellowed out its sound, with less-distorted guitars, in favor of more clean & clear sounds. Although math­rock, like screamo, has also been a great friend of post-rock, the fusion of math­rock & post-rock has typically been done to achieve different musical goals.

Nevertheless, the kinship of these two genres persists through the present day, & many bands have fused the two genres to great effect. The purpose of this playlist is to catalogue examples of these fusions, with the limitation that at most one song per artist is allowed.

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