At Tweeter Center with Fall Out Boy and other groups

The first thing that came to mind after Friday's show - Fall Out Boy and like-raging friends at Camden's Tweeter Center - was that, had I been on a diet, I would have gained 36 pounds.

With the exception of Houston's drawling MC/jeweler Paul Wall, the speed demon emo ushered forth from the bands was akin to the sugar rush you would get from pouring chocolate syrup into Red Bull.

FOB's wordy songs and bristling (but brooding) power-pop seemed but an extension of its odd-couple front men: shy, cherubic composer/vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump and lean, chatty bassist/lyricist/mouthpiece Pete Wentz.

The Rundgren-esque ballad "Golden" and the halting "I'm Like a Lawyer with the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)" aside, everything FOB did raced to the exit, keeping its bruised emotions intact - although all those petulant makeup-stained lyrics proved irksome after a while.

That wasn't always a bad thing. The hurried pace and ringing repetitive guitars on "Carpal Tunnel of Love" and their cover of Jacko's "Beat It" might have been too similar. But it was hard to hate a band that borrowed Leonard Cohen ("Hum Hallelujah") for its hard-core finest and made protest songs ("This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race") dippy and sugary enough for the medicine to go down.

Although cut from the same cloth as Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is . . . came across as too unbridled. Vocalist William Beckett was coltish and weirdly winsome with just enough blunt lyrical bite (when you could hear them; everyone in The Academy Is suffered from a muddy mix) to keep them more bittersweet than sappy.

While +44's debut recording was a more mood-swinging experience, tattooed love god Travis Barker and company kept its live proceedings too meaty, beaty, speedy and dumb. Luckily, "When Your Heart Stops Beating" had a hook. The rest of +44's tunes were forgotten by the time I came back from buying Slushees.

"Grillz" hit-maker Wall's hard slurring voice and thick loping hippity hop could have been lost within the eve's rawk hyperactivity. But his skills were as shiny as his grills, and his presence a tart retort to the evening's saccharine harriedness.