Yes, Touché Amoré was an aggressive band, but they had deep melodic hooks and a cracked, weathered relatability coursing through their veins.

On both their self-titled 2008 EP as well as their debut album, To The Beat Of A Dead Horse (which characteristically ripped through 11 songs in about 18 minutes), their calling card was “Honest Sleep,” a song that began with the piss and vinegar of a classic emoviolence track but coalesced into a hauntingly memorable shout-along about sleep deprivation, loneliness, and the kind of conflicted relationship with your hometown that was normally reserved for pop-punk bands like Fireworks and Man Overboard. At first glance, they were easily defined by frontman Jeremy Bolm’s sandpapery voice - outwardly harsh but capable of delivering lyrics with the utmost clarity and conviction - and a bracingly snarky attitude that revealed itself in song titles like “Hipsterectomy” and “,” a loving holdover from the days of smart-ass song titles and lyrics courtesy of the likes of Neil Perry and Palatka.īut a closer look revealed an uncommon depth to their songwriting, both in their mournful guitar melodies as well as in Bolm’s lyrics, which could be witty and withering or self-lacerating and beautifully neurotic in equal measure. Springing forth from the same fertile California DIY hardcore soil that had birthed soon-to-be-legendary contemporaries like Ceremony, Loma Prieta, Dangers, and Punch, Touché was a singular beast. But the band that was the most searingly direct in its approach, as well as the band that held its ’90s screamo touchstones closest to its heart, was Touché Amoré.

La Dispute, Pianos Become The Teeth, Defeater - these are borderline household names now.

The Wave was a semi-jocular term, referring to bands that worked within the sonic cross-section of uncompromisingly independent and abrasive ’90s hardcore and the kind of warmly melodic sensibilities and accessible vulnerability that had turned emo into an explosive juggernaut at the turn of the century. The advent of the New Tens, however, represented a boiling point where that same underground world, thanks to the exposure and interconnectivity granted by websites like Tumblr and MySpace, was beginning to invade the same spaces that had once mercilessly co-opted its sound and ethos. The ’90s and the aughts had seen underground hardcore operating within its own vibrant and self-sustaining ecosystem even as many of the bands it nurtured were rocketing to greater heights. What had once denoted a style of music that pushed the boundaries of the genre it came from was now, in many ways, codified and commodified into something sleek and polished, the likes of which hardcore had initially willed itself into existence to spite.īut to only think of post-hardcore in that sense was to ignore the hyperactive underbelly that had always existed in the DIY community. By 2011, post-hardcore had become a meaningless term.

Touche amore condolences