Download or read book The Big Book of Emo Album Covers written by Alternative Press Magazine and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Alternative Press Big Book Of Emo Album Covers collects over 200 records that have been described as "emo" by writers, critics, pundits and fans. As Jesse Richman says in the book's foreword, the artists featured elevated the level of their feelings to that of complex thinking, soldering their unvarnished truths to their own personal musical formulas "until soon enough, there was no formula at all, just a chain of influences and a belief in the power and importance of the personal." Starting with the punk-rock aesthetic that marked Washington, D.C.'s Revolution Summer of 1985, the book traverses the quiet-loud minimalism of '90s acts such as Christie Front Drive and Mineral; diverts into realms as diverse as electronic pop and powerviolence hardcore; and returns again in the 21st century with wounded vocals, guyliner, trimmed beards and even more feelings. This compendium of album covers details an underground movement whose core cell division inspired a great number of bands, from award-winners to the willfully obscure. While each record has brief summaries about the content therein, there's also context in the individual album jackets as well, from the brutalist primitivism of Rites Of Spring's only album to the unmitigated dark whimsy of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade to American Football's mysterious meteorology. As such, The Big Book Of Emo Album Covers does what many have argued but no one has ever really attempted: the compiling of the various manifestations of what has been termed "emo" without judgment or allegiance to generational eras. While all music may be emotional, context is nine-tenths of the law, and the outfits listed here have been wearing their amygdalas on their sleeves as a means of inspiring generations past, present and future. At the very least, this book should cause lively discussion over the minutiae of the genre (read: "How did that get in there?"). At its best, it will serve as a proxy for that time machine that will never be built in the hopes forlorn listeners will discover their new (old) favorite bands.