Tinglerz bashing out garage rock

It's hot, and the neighbors are getting hotter.

The band's pushing it hard in a small, stuffy garage barely 10 feet wide, illuminated only by a spare bulb that hangs from the wall, heat radiating from the place like freshly poured asphalt.

Joe Perv's got his game face on, his features contorted into a pained grimace, like he's trying to digest broken glass as he lashes at his bright green drum kit.

To his left, bassist Jhen Kobran, clad in jeans and a tattered Exploited T-shirt, plays from the back of her heels, "bitch" scrawled across the pick guard of her deep red instrument.

To his right, singer/guitarist Kei yelps as if his tonsils were on fire, clawing at his instrument like he was trying to scratch some impossible itch.

Two days later, The Tinglerz will play their first show.

But right now, their audience consists primarily of an agitated gray-haired dude from a few houses away, who's worked up that his wife can hear Perv's kick drum from their bedroom.

Perv calms the guy down eventually.

"That was our first noise complaint," he grins afterward.

And it probably won't be the last for this promising new power trio.

The band's a reunion of sort for Perv and Kei, who played together in well-traveled punk combo The Pervs before breaking up in 2003.

"My dad got sick and I got a little distracted from what was what. But it was an amicable split," says Perv, who most recently played with co-ed punks The Objex. "It was cool."

As for Kei, who fronted Vegas rockers Jupiter Shifter after The Pervs, he's had to recover from a bad car accident he suffered last year.

"I was out of it for a while, but I was playing by myself, doing songs, and I played some for Joe," he says. "Different stuff, quiet stuff."

And then there's Kobran, a Boston transplant who used to play in national rockers Half Cocked and Slunt before growing wary of the music business for a while.

"I was trying to get out of retirement," says Kobran on joining up with the band. "They just had a really good sound and sensibility -- that sounds so contrived, but it's true. They sounded close enough to what I like to listen to that I could contribute -- and make them my slaves."

Together, the three bash out coarse yet hooky garage rock that ranges from a gritty, hard-eyed swing to open throttle punk flavored by Kei's Chuck Berry-esque solos and Perv's jazzy drumming.

Sitting at Perv's kitchen table after practice, dining on burgers as Perv's dog, Detour, angles for scraps, the band chats up some of their musical favorites: Zeke, John Mellencamp, The Police, Buddy Rich, Queens of the Stone Age.

It's a lot to take in. Just ask the guy across the street.

"We're still feeling each other out," Kobran says. "Everybody came to the table with a lot of different stuff. And all of it rocks."

Jason Bracelin's "Sounding Off" column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 702-383-0476 or e-mail him at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com.