The guys in the Used often loiter in laneways, challenging unsuspecting passersby to rounds of a game called Prove You’re More Emo Than Us.

Jeph Howard is living proof there are definite benefits to spending at least part of every day in a good old-fashioned rage. On tour, the bassist does just that with the Used, the Utah-spawned group that’s spent the better part of this decade celebrating the miseries of human existence. (Or, more accurately, the miseries of singer Bert McCracken.) Based on the quartet’s fourth and latest full-length, Artwork, the band’s members have yet to work out all the issues that, earlier this decade, made them kings of screamo’s first-wave graduating class.

Funnily enough, though, Howard couldn’t be more Zenlike about what he does for a living. If you want someone even more bummed out than McCracken seems on Artwork tracks like “Blood on My Hands” (sample lyric: “Feel the pain that I never show/And I hope you know it’s never healing”), he’s not your man. Nine years into his tenure with the Used, Howard still can’t believe that he gets paid to do things that he loves, such as travel.

“I like to see things,” the easygoing bassist says. “I like to get out, to see what a city has to offer—its people and its food. I love that, just the whole idea of walking around and adventuring.”

If Howard is feeling even more upbeat than usual these days, it’s because the Used was able to work its way out from under a dark cloud for Artwork. Unhappy with everything from their management to the direction of their last couple of albums, the band’s members took action. The decision to jettison their management was an easy one. More daring was walking away from John Feldmann, who produced all of the Used’s past records.

Teaming up with Matt Squire (Panic at the Disco) would quickly turn into something positive for the group, the initial bonding coming over a shared love of old hardcore. The resulting record ramps up the guitar violence, but as much as “The Best of Me” makes the Used sound like a natural headliner for the next Warped Tour, Artwork offers more than a one-note attack. Nice touches include the stargazing six-string atmospherics on “Meant to Die”, the techno backbeat on the grinding “On the Cross”, and the industrial-goth window dressing in “Come Undone”.

Howard has an easy explanation for why the Used is determined to draw from all sections of the record store.

“We didn’t come from a scene,” he says. “Our brothers didn’t come from hardcore bands or posthardcore bands. We don’t have family that started a scene that turned into another scene. There was no scene where we came from. None of the bands really mixed or mashed—all we had in common was that we all wanted to play music.”

And in the case of at least one member of the Used, see the world, which Howard won’t stop doing once the Used completes its current tour.

“I’ve got some family in Japan,” he says. “Well, not really family, but I consider them family, and I’m usually there a couple of times a year. And my girlfriend’s from Japan—so we’ve been there to visit a couple of times. But I think the goal now is to go to some new places. I love Southeast Asia and that whole part of the world.”

The Used plays the Pacific Coliseum on Tuesday (November 17).