Welcome to the club, I've smoked several. Metal films are a good substitute, and I see no reason to reject carbon film either. I expect we will make the switch eventually.
Traditionally, the bulk resistance of carbon composite has been assumed to be best because it has no inductance beyond that of its length. (Film resistors usually have a small spiral of conductive material which has a bit of inductance.) But VoltSecond, a long term Bottlehead who doesn't post much these days but is an excellent EE with tons of relevant professional experience, reports that he's used metal films as gate stoppers on extremely high transconductance FETs with great success. That's good enough for me - the real world trumps even the best theory, every time.