Sonagi is not just another screamo outfit; their approach to the genre uniquely builds off the group's members' musical and personal interests and experiences. Coming from shared and distinct creative and industrial paths in basement and warehouse DIY culture, bike messengering, and working-class city life, the band formed in the summer of 2019 with Ryann Slauson from the band Closer (they/them, vocals,), Harim Jung (they/them, vocals/guitar), Michael Englisis (he/him, bass), and Keean Mansour (he/him, drums).

With a sound combining familiar, angular chaos with refreshing and innovative melody, Sonagi is the romanization of the Korean word 소나기 meaning “sudden showers.” The term is often used to describe brief and heavy rain, usually on hot summer afternoons during the monsoon season. Sonagi is also the title of a culturally significant 1959 short story by writer Han Sung-won about a young couple's love story in the Post-War and Pre-Industrial countryside. Like the fleeting torrential showers and nostalgic story in a haunting setting, Philadephia's Sonagi sonically and lyrically captures the dialectic interchanges between destruction and renewal, grief and recovery.

Precedent is the debut collection of songs from Philadelphia screamo and melodic post-hardcore group Sonagi. The overall sonic approach of the album aims to capture movement between cathartic release and respite along a continuum of emotional reactivity and contemplation through the interplay of melody, structure, and form. This is reflected in the juxtaposition of sections with layers of overdriven guitars, blast-beats, and screamed vocals with sections of heavily reverberated melodies and introspective moments. The record includes driving parts in unison with abrasive harmonic progressions, intertwined with polyphonic sections of distinct melodic elements heard in each vocal and instrumental voicing.