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	Related Links Darkbuster's official Web site Sean Richardson writes about the reuniting of Darkbuster's. Chris Rucker writes about The Konks Brett Milano writes about The Konks winning the Boston leg of Little Steven’s Underground Garage competition.

THE RELEASE OF THE KONKS’ homonymous debut album should occasion a massive sigh of relief by all involved — but since it’s the Konks, let’s make that a raunchy sigh of relief with primitive drums and lots of fuzztone. Formed of former Bullet LaVolta and Coffin Lids members, the band have been a familiar and well-liked club attraction, winning the Boston leg of Little Steven’s national garage-band competition last year. But it was two years before they got around to recording a CD, and another year before the disc made it to the stores.

Bassist Jon Porth explains, "I thought it would never happen. I thought we’d just make an unreleased album that someone would discover someday and say, ‘Here’s some weird band that was around when all that lo-fi garage shit was happening.’ " The Konks recorded their CD on their own and shopped it afterward. First to say "yes" was legendary Bomp! founder Greg Shaw, a lifelong scholar and supporter of garage rock — some people think he even coined the term. Shaw, who died last October, was behind the Pebbles compilations, the first four volumes of which remain essential. Yet Bomp! had released very little Boston music — just a DMZ album of early demos and Willie Alexander’s solo debut in 1980 — until recent years, when he signed the Coffin Lids and the Turpentine Brothers.

So the band felt honored to work with Shaw, who they never met but corresponded with by e-mail. "We wanted to talk to him about different things he’d done, but all he wanted to talk about was the Konks," singer/drummer Kurt Davis recalls. "We suddenly stopped getting e-mails back from him, and then we found out why. And I felt guilty for just being concerned about my band." Adds guitarist Bob Wilson, "Your label owner dies, that’s about the worst luck you can have. And after all that, the record’s only out a month later than it was supposed to be."

The band’s trademark raunch translates well to the studio, even if the word "stereo" on the CD label is an outright lie: The disc was recorded on eight tracks and then mixed down to mono. But they didn’t go willfully lo-fi like their pals the Coffin Lids or Mr. Airplane Man. Instead, the disc has a warm and full mid-’60s sound, with such a heavy low end, you can barely tell that Davis’s drum kit consists of one snare, one tom, and two milk crates. "We got turned down by a couple labels who thought it wasn’t lo-fi enough," laughs Wilson. "But it had to be mono — that way you can have a broken car speaker and you’ll still hear the whole thing." In fact, the mono has as much to do with the band’s record-collector instincts as anything else. "We just handed the mastering engineer a copy of the remastered Raw Power [by Iggy & the Stooges, a wall shaker of a disc] and said ‘Make it sound like this,’ " Davis recalls. "I loved it when he looked at me and said, ‘That kick drum sounds a little weird.’ That’s because there isn’t one."

The disc also marks the first time Davis has sung on a record since Bullet LaVolta broke up in 1992. (In the interim he recorded two albums with Peter Prescott’s band Kustomized, but only as the drummer.) Davis ditched his old stage name Yukki Gipe years ago, and one assumes it’s a completely different experience to record a primitive rock album with little outside help.

All the band’s live standards are here, including "29 Fingers" (which celebrates an unfortunate run-in between Wilson’s index finger and a slamming bathroom door) and "God Says Whoa, Motherfucker," which sums up the universe with exactly four words of title and lyric (for propriety’s sake, the second half of the title doesn’t appear in the CD booklet). Two of their trademark covers are also here: Soupy Sales’s "King Kong" (which has to be the only song in the English language to use "King Kong" as an adjective) and a more surprising stab at Aerosmith’s "Let the Music Do the Talking." As Wilson puts it, "It’s always good to do a song people already know. Especially when it takes them a verse and a half to realize what it is."

The Konks’ CD release party takes place this Friday, April 8, at the Abbey Lounge, 3 Beacon Street in Inman Square, with the New York band Andy G & the Roller Kings (including ex-Cramps bassist Candy Del Mar) and the Tampoffs; call (617) 441-9631. Darkbuster play an all-ages show this Saturday, April 9, at Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street in Boston, with the Ducky Boys, Far from Finished, the Skels, and the Dead Pets; call (617) 262-2437.