6th Avenue were a band from Germany, presumably active in the late 90s to somewhere in the early aughts. There's precious little information about this band available. The liner notes for their album mention they had multiple tracks on promo CDs and compilations, but as far as the modern internet is concerned, they have one release and one release only: 2000's …hope is the last to die. Their sound wavers back and forth between emocore\melodic hardcore and emo pop, sometimes landing in the middle and sometimes landing at either extreme, changing from song to song or within the same song. There's even a little midwest emo thrown in there, though not enough to earn the tag, I think.
Unless something else surfaces, this album is their only full release.
Ashen were a band who may have been from Atlanta, and were active from 1996 to 2003. I was unable to find a working archive of their website, but there is an archive for the site of their label, Two Sheds Music, which offers this comprehensive biography:
Ashen began as an instrumental trio in 1996, as long-time friends Benjamin Cenis, Kelly Guinn, and B.J. Hale came together to put their own spin on the "shoegazing" genre with their blend of textured, melodic pieces. A couple of years later, the trio felt the need to add a vocalist, and Erin Akemi was brought into the mix. The band has now been transformed into a powerhouse which bridges the gap between trailblazers like Swervedriver and the Cure, and more modern indie bands like Jejune and Sarge.
In 1999, the band released its first single, a split 12" which featured two Ashen songs. The band followed that up with a quick tour of the mid-Atlantic and mid-West area, then returned to the studio to finish its brilliant full-length release, No Other Comfort.
Zac Carlson joined the band in early 2001, as B.J. left to focus on his career. Zac had previously played in outfits Autumn Cotillion and For the Life of Me. Having originally passed on auditioning due to time and school constraints, Zac was delighted to learn that the position was still open once No Other Comfort was released, and officially joined the band in January 2001.
The band's efforts to write for its follow-up record was interrupted in May 2002 by a van accident while returning from a show, but the band was able to resume completion of material for a follow-up EP. The band finally recorded Pull and Repel at Zero Return Studios in Atlanta in February 2003, and the EP was released in June 2003.
Shortly following the release of Pull and Repel, Ashen decided to disband, leaving behind a catalog of 15 songs, no fluff, and a lot of disappointed fans.
Benjamin and Kelly are now members of the Atlanta band Fate Heroic, which also features B.J.
Multiple sources, including a review on RateYourMusic, talk about the band as being an early example of emogaze, but to be honest I don't really hear it. Compared to something like, say, Bufferins, or something more modern like Sore Eyelids, the shoegaze elements are very subdued. I would call them an emo pop\midwest emo hybrid with a lot of 90s post-hardcore influence. The midwest emo portion of their sound would become much more prominent on their final EP.
The band's discography is simple enough: A split 12" with Flux Capacitor (a band who are a good candidate for the blog and whose discography is mostly a mystery) in 1999, the full length No Other Comfort a year later in 2000, and the final EP, Pull and Repel, in 2003. Besides that, they contributed a track to Fireworks Anatomy: A Twenty Band Compilation, but it's from the LP.
Unfortunately, my copy of the album came with the booklet somehow glued shut, and opening it destroyed much of the interior artwork. I've been unable to locate a second copy, so for now it is what it is.
Hailing from Milwaukee, The Autumn View were an emo pop band active from the late 90s to the mid-aughts. They have many of the elements common to the genre at the time, mixing mainstream emo pop with post-hardcore instrumentation and screaming. What makes them stand out is the midwest emo they bring into that sound, with a bit of twinkling that goes in and out of the emo pop. The band also aren't quite as glossy as many of their peers, retaining a lot of 90s pop punk style.
Aside from their 2003 album fist-fighting with broken wrists, the band recorded a two-song demo in that same year and released a split with 52 Pickup called for all the wrong reasons… in 1999. As to whether this comprises a full discography, I can't say. Interpunk refers to "compilations and splits," plural, so it's possible there is more material out there.
Sad Man Said were a band from Spain, active from around 2000 to 2004. Despite their name, which definitely should belong to a screamo band, they began life as a pop punk\skatepunk band, and their first album, Statement, was released in 2000 and is straight pop punk to the point it sounds like MxPx to my emo ears. Two years later, their sound morphed into a combination of melodic hardcore and emo pop, leaning more towards the pop side of things. Their second album, 2002's The Value Of Simple Things, is a quick-moving bit of melodic punk with emo pop vocals. It would be their last release, with the band playing a farewell show in 2004.
Genre is a funny thing. More often than not it seems like bands get lumped in with whoever they tour with more than who they sound like, or are allowed to define their own genre when it seems unclear. I would say that this is especially the case with emo, as unwanted a label as it often is, but I'm not sure that's really true. Try to define the edges of indie rock, for example. Very few bands are genre defining, and perhaps only they fit neatly in the box they created.
And then sometimes there are bands which are clearly of a particular genre that just somehow slip through the cracks. In the case of New York's The Forms, I think it might have something to do with the semi-mainstream attention they garnered, including a glowing review for their first album in Pitchfork. They were crowned the next big indie rock band by a bunch of indie rock outlets, and that fact largely papered over their musical inclinations. I have never seen Icarus on a list of emo albums, nor talked about when post-SDRE works like The End of the Rings Wars are discussed. Somehow, this album has the stamp of indie rock all over it, this despite the fact that multiple review outlets drew direct comparisons to Sunny Day Real Estate (The Morning Call had the grace to at least call it "emo-rock," whatever that is).
If this seems a little strange given the comparisons to SDRE, it's absolutely absurd when you've actually listened to the damn thing. Released in 2003, Icarus is mathy, yes, and sometimes art rock-ish, and occasionally aggressive, and maybe even a bit avant-garde, but at all times it is a combination of Diary and LP2, a soaring, operatic work of midwest emo.
The band's follow-up work may also account for their lack of presence in the emo consciousness. Their second album, a self-titled work, sees the band embrace their label and go pretty much full indie rock on it and subsequent releases. Regardless, Icarus stands as a seminal work of midwest emo and if you're reading this blog, you need to hear it.
A note on song titles: I am following the naming conventions of the digipak edition I have, which simply lists the first six songs as 'Stel 1-2', etcetera. While later digital releases have added 'intro' and 'outro' tags to song segments, I'm going with what the band intended in 2003.
Porter Hall were a band from Calgary, Canada, active from 1997 to about 2004, though apparently they briefly reformed somewhere around 2009. I'm basing the 2004 breakup date on the release of their second and last album on German label Dead Serious, which must have been the European physical release because the album itself was released in 2001; no one has added a Canadian variant to Discogs, but I'm presuming one exists. I'm betting that band survived to see that release, but they may not have.
Porter Hall played emo pop punk in the 90s tradition, showing no sign of the early 2000s mall emo trends. Their sound is identical between their demo and their first record, to the point some of the songs use the same takes on the album. Their second album, Everything I Know I Stolen, is a little more aggressive than than the first, featuring a bit of emocore edge and rougher vocals.
Unless one of their compilation tracks features a different version than the albums, this download comprises the band's current known discography.
The Wayback Machine has preserved All Astronauts' hilariously grandiose bio on their original website, a cosmic bit of hype that definitely sets a large stage for the band while failing to provide basic information. Consequently, I don't know for certain where the band was from, but they were probably in the same area as their record label, Lookalive, in Winston-Salem, NC. Their sound is a cross between the quiet\loud dynamics of emo and propulsive, mathy indie rock, gliding all around these sounds and others from similar genres, including a little slowcore. There are many long passages that sound like the lead in to a screamo track, but are actually headed in a different direction. In some ways they remind me of twisty indie\emo fusion bands like Utah!, though All Astronauts have a much harder emo edge, showing more hardcore roots than you usually find in this sound.
The band's only release appears to be 2004's Navigation Songs. The only other song I know of is a live track that was once available through the band's website.
Autumn Lee were a band who were, according to Louisville Hardcore, "at least mostly" from Shelbyville, KY. They were active for an unknown segment of the late 90s, and played jangly, indie rock-inspired emo pop. The first song off their self-titled EP is called "Poppy Song," which is appropriate. The rest of the EP is a bit more sedate.
If you look only at Discogs, the band's discography is very simple, consisting of a self-titled EP in 1998 and three comp tracks, two of which are the same song. However, this Soundcloud page complicates things tremendously. There are two Autumn Lee releases on that page: one called 8 Track Recording which was either literally recorded on an 8-track or is missing a song, since there are seven songs total, and one with six tracks purporting to be Autumn Lee / Arise Records Release.
This is not true. I have the Arise Records EP in hand and there are only five tracks on it. Furthermore, only four of the six songs are actually on the physical EP, and three of them are incorrectly titled. The other two tracks aren't on the album at all. This motley assortment of music raises all kind of questions. Most of the tracks from 8 Track are attributed to "Final EP" while the rest are named; is this an actual EP that saw release? Are the named songs not part of it? Where are the non-album tracks attributed to the S/T EP from? I had originally thought that one of the tracks, "More," was put on a compilation, hinting that perhaps others from the collection were as well, but this turned out to be only half-right: Upon tracking down the compilation, I discovered it's a completely different version of the song. This makes me think that perhaps the version of "The Poppy Song" from another compilation is also different, but I haven't been able to find this one yet.
In short, I can't attribute the majority of the band's discography to any particular release, nor say with any confidence that this is all of it.
