What exactly are “screamo” vocals? Is that just the way you old people try to buck the trend instead of using “screaming?”

The next person that uses the word “screamo” to refer to lyrics screamed in the hardcore fashion needs to be smacked. Seriously. On a related note, I was watching an episode of Lifetime’s “Wife Swap” (metal cred -2000), the one stupid mom was talking about her son was in a “screamo band” (it was just a pussy hardcore band with melodic parts) and dresses in a “screamo fashion.” (girl’s jeans, ear plugs, lip ring, tight hoodies) Seriously? People (including moms trying to sound hip) are using this word as a catchall for any punk/hardcore-ish music that has screaming vocals.

This word needs to be eliminated at all costs. It originally referred to a certain obscure style (which I admittedly don’t know much about..I just know it is very different from the music being called “screamo” today by ignorant people) of music “which predominantly evolved from hardcore punk, among other genres, in the early tyle 1990s” with such Fugazi influenced bands as Heroin, Antioch Arrow, Angel Hair, Mohinder, Swing Kids, and Portraits of Past, Circle Takes The Square. Somehow around 2002-2004 people just switched the meaning of the word to refer to bands that mix hardcore-punk screaming with clean vocals (Thursday, Underoath, From Autumn to Ashes, Poison the Well, the Used, etc.).

Usually this genre nonsense isn’t a big deal to me, but when people are using the same term to describe everything from The Dillinger Escape Plan to The Used I start to get frustrated.

How can you be a fan of heavy music and not have heard “this band” (DEP) before? I’m seriously curious. It’s like being a fan of hip-hop and saying that you have never listened to Nas or something..