"Screamo" is a music style that developed out of Emo, more specifically hardcore Emo, in the early 1990s. Characteristic of the genre are the screaming vocals (not growling). Other than that, it's fairly hard to classify (particularly since the rule about screaming vocals is bent fairly often). Sometimes also misreferred to as Emo Violence which is a closely related but not identical genre, though each genre borrow ideas from one another. Much like its predecessor, it's very much an underground genre with virtually no mainstream recognition. The majority of screamo bands are from the Northeastern or East coast of the United States (side-by-side with Hardcore coming out of the same area), but there are some bands coming out of Canada, France and Germany, as well as Australia.

Again, much like screamo's predecessor, emo, bands often release 7" records on independent labels, much in the spirit of D.I.Y.. Some of the larger labels releasing a large number of screamo records include Level Plane, Ebullition, Slave Union, Alone, and Electric Human Project.

Many screamo bands are short lived (which was also common with emo bands during its prime in the 90s), and oftentimes recorded material goes out of print. Examples of this are Mohinder, who made only 2 7"s their career (they also had a split 7" with Nitwits, and a few compilation tracks - later almost all of their vinyl recordings were documented on an LP released by GSL), and Hassan I Sabbah, who had a similar output. This makes it difficult for the genre of screamo as a whole to expand.

In recent years, the internet has helped spread word of screamo through websites and through online distros (distributions). Many fans of the genre have turned to EBay to expand their collections of rare and out-of-print records. This leads to very high prices on records that often cost a meager $10 or less when they were first released. Some members of bands who have broken up have expressed displeasure in these high prices and urge fans not to buy them, or buy a posthumously released discography instead.

However, in recent years, the term "screamo" has been misused very commonly to describe emo, postpunk, alternative rock, metalcore, or hardcore bands with emo influences. Bands like Taking Back Sunday, Glassjaw, Thursday, Underoath, Refused, Bleeding Through, Every Time I Die , Unearth , Atreyu, Senses Fail, Finch, Hawthorne Heights, Emery, Saosin, Silverstein have been wrongly called screamo in the press.

Some artists in the genre:

• A Day in Black and White (first album put out by magnacarta, full length from Level-Plane)
• Circle Takes the Square (although atypical of the genre)
• City of Caterpillar
• Decorum
• Encyclopedia of American Traitors
• Envy
• Funeral Diner
• Hassan I Sabbah
• Hot Cross
• I, Robot
• Jesse Washington
• Joshua Fit For Battle
• Kaospilot
• La Quiete
• Love Like...Electrocution
• Love Lost But Not Forgotten
• Louise Cyphre
• Madeline Ferguson
• Neil Perry
• Off Minor
• Orchid
• Pg.99
• Portrait
• Portraits of Past
• Raein
• Reversal of Man
• Saetia
• Spirit of Versailles
• Textbook Traitors
• The Assistant
• The Death of Anna Karina
• The Now
• The Red Scare
• To Dream of Autumn
• Tristan Tzara (band)
• Usurp Synapse
• Utarid
• Van Johnson
• Welcome the Plague Year
• Yage (from Germany)
• Yaphet Kotto
• You and I
• Zann

Correction: Emocore usually refers to post-hardcore bands with introspective lyrics. Most of the early emocore bands predate emo by a few years, ie: Rites of Spring, Falling Forward, Dag Nasty.