Race For Titles

Race For Titles were a late-period midwest emo band from Omaha. Their sound, at least on the first album, consists of the continued melding with indie rock that midwest emo underwent as the nineties faded. While it's true that midwest emo always sprang from a combination of what was happening in post-hardcore and indie rock, the indie rock side of the spectrum became more and more pronounced as the years passed and the separation from post-hardcore and hardcore grew. American Football is the most well-known example of this phenomenon, but other late-period midwest emo bands such as Fly, Mordecai and Angels in the Architecture demonstrate the same principle to varying degrees (though it should be pointed out that American Football moved more towards math rock than the indie scene).

The first album, S/T, is excellent, drawing on strong midwest emo influences and some emo pop. Released in 2002, it's a great example of late-period second wave emo; it was put out exclusively on CD and about three to four years after the second wave's high water mark, which explains its obscurity. The second album reverses the mixture, in that it's more of an indie rock album than an emo one. Its release structure is also very confusing, appearing on Discogs as a physical 2008 release and most other places as a series of singles. What I think is going on is that the album was originally released in 2008 on CD by The Redemption Recording Company, and in the ensuing years it was parceled out to a bunch of digital-only compilations. Besides the two albums, there's a split 7", put out the same year as the first album.

Race for Titles Discography