CoreChaos is making Munich an emo hub

Munich’s CoreChaos collective is helping turn the city into a hub for emo, BR24 Kultur reports. The group puts on concerts and festivals featuring genres from shoegaze and black metal to noise and, especially, emo.

The scene’s renewed attention comes as My Chemical Romance recently topped the US Billboard charts with its 20-year-old album “The Black Parade”. CoreChaos says it wants to show how emo has evolved and to present diverse line-ups, according to Jany, a member of the collective’s core team.

The group also aims to highlight that emo has never been a genre only for white cisgender men. It brings international bands to Munich that would otherwise not play elsewhere in Bavaria, and says it wants to encourage people to connect with one another. The city recognised this work in 2025 by awarding CoreChaos a pop music programme grant. The award cited the scene’s social and political engagement, as well as its ticket prices adjusted to people’s circumstances.

From hardcore roots to the mainstream

Emo emerged in the United States in the 1980s, when the term “Emotional Core” was used for bands including Rites of Spring, Embrace and Beefeater. Compared with hardcore, their music was more emotionally nuanced, with more vulnerable lyrics and less of the aggressive dancing associated with the genre.

The scene also became a space for people who no longer felt at home in traditional hardcore. In 1985, the “Revolution Summer Movement” grew out of the scene, opposing toxic masculinity and violence. Early emo bands, including Rites of Spring, were among its leading participants.

In the 1990s, emo developed a gentler sound, with dreamy guitar riffs, melancholic trumpets and broken chords. Its lyrics focused more on individual feelings than political issues, and the music drew closer to indie and math rock. In the 2000s, emo reached the mainstream, with bands such as My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World and Paramore appearing on MTV. Tokio Hotel singer Bill Kaulitz became one of Germany’s best-known figures associated with the style.

Festivals return in 2027

CoreChaos plans to stage its “Rites of Spring: A Real Emo Fest” festival in spring 2027, followed in autumn by “The Summer Ends: A Fake Emo Fest”. The names play on an online meme that only first-wave emo counts as “real” emo. The collective’s own message, familiar from another emo meme, is that emo was never just a phase.