A hard night’s day

The sound of punk rock takes many forms. On the radio you can hear a watered-down version in dolled-up bands such as Panic! At the Disco and Fall Out Boy who wear eyeliner and sing oh-so-achingly about girls.

The Heart Attacks like to dress up, too. Its members wear tight jeans and ripped T-shirts. Their upper bodies are festooned with tattoos, and pretty, stylized hair drips down to their shoulders. On stage, lead singer Chase Noles (also known as “Teenage Haircut”) bobbles around like a drunken peacock, while guitarist/back-up vocalist Tuck Smith, drummer Brad Goocher, bassist Paul Masci and rhythm guitarist Dave Klein evoke a glam-rock explosion.

Chase sings about girls, too, but his take is less sweet than his corporate-radio brethren. “Well if you’re the traveling type and you wanna visit the emergency room/’Cause I mean you’re gonna need stitches ‘cause I’m gonna build you up/Just to break you in two,” Chase caterwauls on “Heart Attack.” The sound is hard, loud and uncompromising.

“A lot of people think we’re glam because our hair’s long or whatever. But I don’t like glam shit at all,” says Chase during an interview at Eats. Seated alongside Tuck, his two fists bear the words “riff” and “raff.” Distinguishing between ’70s glam rock like the New York Dolls and ’80s glam like Poison, he says, “All the early glam stuff, I like that stuff. We get [comparisons to] New York Dolls a lot, too, but we’re not transvestites.”

“I’m not wearing high heels and I’m not wearing glitter or lipstick,” Tuck adds. The band is influenced by classic punk groups such as Dead Boys and D Generation, and is not an irony-laden exercise in nostalgia. “We’re for real about our shit. It’s not a joke,” he says.

Around Midtown Atlanta, the members have a surly reputation for drinking and fighting. “Yeah, we’re assholes,” Tuck says. “We get into a lot of fights, but it’s with assholes and pieces of shit. We don’t shit where we eat.” He says the band doesn’t have any beef with any local promoters.

That didn’t stop a fight from erupting between him and Alex Weiss, who runs OK Productions, during a recent Black Lips concert Weiss promoted at Drunken Unicorn. Accounts differ as to what happened that night, but the end result is that the Drunken Unicorn canceled an Oct. 21 release party for Hellbound and Heartless. (It was eventually moved to the Masquerade.) Weiss confirmed that the fight took place, but declined further comment. Tuck says he has since tried to apologize. “We’re trying to squash it. The rumors that are going down — somebody said I hit him with a bottle, somebody said I stabbed him — are being blown way out of proportion,” he says.

It wasn’t the first time one of the Heart Attacks got in trouble. Tuck and Chase say Travis Brown has temporarily replaced Paul Masci on bass due to Masci’s legal troubles. A press biography on the band reads, “True bad asses, four out of five Heart Attacks [members] are legally bound to the state of Georgia.”

At least the Heart Attacks’ reckless behavior comes out in their gloriously ragged and unkempt performances. After issuing Heart Scissor Killers on local imprint Brand Name Records in 2005, the band made a few memorable appearances on that year’s Warped Tour. But punk icon Tim Armstrong (from Rancid and the Transplants) noticed the crew, and scooped them up for Hellcat Records, an offshoot of Epitaph.

For Hellbound and Heartless, which was released Oct. 24, Epitaph hooked up the band with Joan Jett, who sings on “Tearstained Letters.” Otherwise, the Heart Attacks’ Epitaph deal hasn’t changed its members. All of them still toil in low-paying jobs at local restaurants and nightclubs. “We’re all working-class people,” Tuck says.

“I think punk rock is about the attitude that goes with it, and the energy, and the trouble and mischief [punks] get into,” Chase says. “The Heart Attacks is about the attitude and trying to keep rock real.”