After you spend five minutes with them, though, it’s clear they lack a certain je ne sais quoi between the ears. MTV’s tagline on its show Diaries fits them aptly: they think they know but they have no idea.

They’ve got different reasons for their dumb-smartness. All are equally inexcusable. All are equally intolerable. In the Third World where only opportunity and choice make for success the smart-dumb people are the ultimate wastrel. They have squandered all opportunity. They have spit in the face of choice.

While they could be out getting illumination with genuine field work, these people choose to be café intellectuals. There are lots of these littering the publishing industry. Alas, some of them I know quite well.

From their self-titled fourth album, Chicosci apparently know these same people in the music industry on a similarly odious, intimate level. But they feel for them more a Zen sadness than my own contempt.

Chicosci is the only local hardcore, emo-pop band to have come closest to a kind of mainstream success. Look up the band on-line, on any search engine, and you’ll even get a hit from a site that features new language and slang terms defined. As in the excerpt below.

They were first named Chico Science, in homage to the Brazilian singer of the same name. Though they started as a Deftones cover band, in high school, in the late 1990s (with most of the members hailing from the Ateneo De Manila University), they quickly decided to spend more time on their own music.

This turned out to be a choice that would pay off quickly. Their debut release, Revenge of the Giant Robot (2000—EMI Records), was a modest but unequivocal success exceeding the expectations of even the band members. But it was the dissonant, art-core noise of Method of Breathing (2001—EMI Records) that propelled them to the limelight with the juggernaut single "Paris."

Years later, in a media interview, vocalist Miggy Chavez would confess that Revenge. . .felt like more of a testing ground. "To be honest," Miggy writes, "we consider our second outing Method of Breathing as our debut album, as we’ve experienced a lot of growth musically while we made the record." In hindsight, the song "Paris" would stand out statistically as the only song to hold the number one spot on radio station NU 107’s Midnight Countdown for a lengthy period of time. It was also on this album that they formally changed their name to Chicosci, to avoid legal difficulties that could arise from the confusion of names.

By the time they released Icarus (2004 –VIVA Records), they had incorporated atmosphere into their sound and gained a craftsmanship for song that belied their early twentysomething years. Chicosci fans were legion by then, with a solid cult following at its foundation. Things came to a climax when Chicosci opened for Good Charlotte on the Manila leg of their world tour in July 2005.

Nowadays the band is composed of Miguel "Miggy" Chavez (vocals), Carlos Calderon (bassist), Jose Salvador (drums), Eugene Esquivias (percussions) and Sonny Baquisal (guitars) and Mong Alcaraz (guitars).

Why does Chicosci’s fourth album sound so good? Like it’s an evolutionary leap? Like these hardcore geeks turned from emotives into homo chicoscis?

Mong Alcaraz (who also plays second fiddle in Sandwich): "Yung Method of Breathing ginawa yan dati na busy kami with gigs. Pero after gigs derecho kami sa studio namin. So ang practice namin, since lahat kami may [college schedule], ay around 11pm to 4am. Then pasok kami. Ngayon iba na. Instead of ganoon ka-packed ang sked we stretched it out to a year and a half."

Smart-dumb people abound in any field of endeavor. Chicosci’s record label dropped them after only one album, prompting them to produce this one indpendently. The smart-dumb kin strike again. The same people who would have told Edgar Allan Poe to clean up his prose because it was scaring the kids. The same people who would have asked Moses to make the days of creation into two weeks because the PR people were having a hard time making seven days stick. The smart-dumb people are the friends and enemies of modern art.

The first four tracks of this fourth album (aptly self-titled, mind) are a reproach to the sheer obtuseness of these idiots. Ignorance is not bliss. It is the unforgivable sin of missing an anthemic, carpe noctem hit like "Chicosci Vampire Social Club," the delicate "Seven Black Roses" or the exquisite prayer to love and war that is "Sweet Maria" where chief lyricist Miggy Chavez has outdone himself in penning "guide these bullets in the air" and "grace this moment, hear my prayer" in the same song. Somebody send this album to the head honcho of Victory Records!

For sheer catharsis you can’t beat "A Promise." The poignant lines "Life took you away/ I’ll love you just the same" was written by Miggy in homage to his recently deceased grandfather, a narrative about his grandparents’ undying love.

Here are shades of A Perfect Circle, Rob Zombie and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Horror and awe in one disc. Here’s your Comeback Kid and The Used. Sincerity and craft as weapons. With this opus, Chicosci joins the ranks of other breakthrough albums like Agaw Agimat’s Mantra, Urbandub’s Influence, Radioactive Sago Project’s Urban Gulaman and Slapshock’s Novena. Hail, hail.

"It’s a party album," nods Eugene Esquivas. "Definitely a vibe of celebration," agrees Miggy.

"This time around maraming synthesizers, wurlitzers and electric pianos. There’s a couple of reggae instruments like a melodica, a xylophone, a rapaniki," explains Mong. "There’s also more samba instruments," adds Eugene.

The magical thing is that, if you listen close enough, you will indeed hear these percussion instruments lending dimension and phatness in strategic places. The mixing never drowns out the individual instruments, instead complimenting each other.

My favorite track, "Manila Teenage Death Squad," is a perfect example. Plus you have to dig the phrase "We confess to the murder of a million souls!" Imagine the adolescents jumping up and down on their beds to this one, pointing at their stereos: "Yeah, that’s me! That’s me!"