By Will York

'BROKEN HEARTS ARE for assholes," Frank Zappa once sang. If that's the case, then the rapidly proliferating emo nation is mass-producing a whole new breed of a-hole thanks to the recent development of a diabolical new subgenre: emo metal. –Yes, emo metal. A few years ago the idea of such a subgenre would have sounded patently ridiculous, or even impossible, like country disco or ska goth. But it's catching on, given the wave of brokenhearted, melodramatically named bands like Seven Ways to Scream Your Name, Bleeding Through, and From Autumn to Ashes, the latter of which stop off in San Francisco this week as part of the Vagrant Tour with the Alkaline Trio and Reggie and the Full Effect.

When I play From Autumn to Ashes' latest release, The Fiction We Live (Vagrant), I feel nauseous. This album is the sound of a conflict between two diametrically opposed forces being played out in the earthly sphere, and it hurts to listen to. Like most of the emo metal bands, From Autumn to Ashes' attempted evil hybrid in part employs the dual-vocalist approach: one guy growls and bellows, and another guy does the sensitive, clean-voiced pleading. Musically, they shift between familiar chugga-chugga riffs and softer, more delicately melodic passages, including the occasional acoustic guitar ballad.

Weird hybrid

On paper, this might seem like a best-of-both-worlds, yin-yang situation, but if so, that's true in only the most superficial way. After all, distortion pedals and double bass drums do not make metal heavy on their own, just as singing in a certain tone of voice doesn't make music "emotional." Its superficiality aside, this collision of genres is a bad idea because, ideologically, metal and emo are mutually exclusive philosophies. Emo is about being – or pretending to be – sensitive and emotional. Metal is about conquering your foes and building up emotional armor in the face of adversity. Thus, bands like From Autumn to Ashes are doomed because what they are attempting to do is fraught with fundamental contradictions. It's hard to buy into either the emo or the metal elements.

At least, that's my theory. But what do I know? In its first week, The Fiction We Live sold 15,000 copies and reached 73 on the Billboard 200 album chart – and this band is not on a major label. It just goes to show that if something is aesthetically offensive enough, it's bound to be popular, even if people have to actively seek it out.

Righteous alternatives

The reason I keep up with this music is not so I can complain about it. I actually like some of the bands that have come out of scenes that are at least tangentially related to the emo metal explosion. One of the better metal-related albums I've heard this year is The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good (Relapse), by New Jersey hardcore-metal hybridizers Burnt by the Sun. These clean-cut dudes look like your high school gym teacher and, speaking of improbable combinations, manage to reconcile Noam Chomsky-informed protest lyrics with Morbid Angel-inspired metal. Reading the CD's lyrics, which are way better than the ones on their mildly irritating previous album, Soundtrack to the Personal Revolution (Relapse, 2002), you get the sense they've spent some quality time cozying up with the Illuminatus! Trilogy, dissecting minutes from Bilderberg Group meetings, and engaging in other forms of healthy paranoia. They're armed with righteous anger – if anyone's going to shout at me through my stereo, let it be someone who has something legitimate to be angry about. They also write killer riffs, which I'm sure has a lot more to do with why a P.R. guy from a rival metal label raved about this album to me than their lyrics do.

The other recent hardcore-scene metal album I'm excited about is Hidden Hands of a Sadist Nation (Victory), the latest by Florida's Darkest Hour. It's too seldom mentioned, but most of the emo metal bands pilfer their metal riffs not so much from Slayer and Metallica – although those bands are influences – but from the back catalogs of Swedish bands like At the Gates, Dissection, and In Flames. Darkest Hour do this, too, but they skip the bad emo parts and spend their time focusing on how much they want to be a Swedish metal band. They went so far as to invite a bunch of their heroes from bands such as the Crown and the Haunted to make guest appearances on Sadist Nation. Such hero-worship could wind up being pathetic, but in their case, it's kind of charming. And despite its grim overtones – in keeping with the genre, nearly everything they write is in a minor key – there's a lot of joy and enthusiasm in their music. They make goofy faces and clown around onstage when they play, and they just seem genuine about what they're doing.

It's nice to see that some bands are on the right track, and I thank Darkest Hour for restoring my hope. The irony that "being on the right track" corresponds to listening to Scandinavian metal – not a genre known for its musicians' upstanding citizenship – is notable. However, when the alternative is seeing our male teenagers turn into a bunch of cheating, crying, and whining emo guys, you have to take what you can get.