I need to first drop the obvious here.

Four separate people guffawed at me when I told them the name of the band I was heading to see last Sunday. Granted, see one of those people was my mother.

I told a buddy in an e-mail, treatment “Hey, going to see Diarrhea Planet on Sunday at TT’s! Wanna come?” She replied with, “Wha? Dia… I can’t even. Stop.” This was the general reaction from people who hadn’t heard of this buzz band out of Nashville, this band who’s opened for Wavves and JEFF the Brotherhood and toured with the So So Glos and on and on and on. People everywhere have been talking about the “repulsive” name.

And in the same way people talk about their crappy name (ha!), people talk about how surprised they are that they aren’t terrible or don’t suck – perhaps that’s by design. Diarrhea Planet has mentioned in past interviews that they picked an obnoxious name to alienate the commercial music pretentious population of Belmont University where DP’s members met, those in the industry who perhaps take themselves too seriously.

Which is interesting, considering how good Diarrhea Planet actually is, their songs best described by their bio as “The Ramones holding Van Halen hostage.” Watching them is like watching the Wyld Stallyns after Bill and Ted discovered punk rock and Turbonegro. The six-piece band, four of which guitar players finger tapping and soloing all at once, have crafted punk-meets-metal-solo songs that include the majority of the band singing together as a raucous chorus of Whoa-oh-ohs. As technical guitar players, those in Diarrhea Planet are very, very proficient (with excellent drums and bass, too!), making their eye-roll-worthy name almost ironic. I’m still on the fence if the name is sort of a shame or absolutely brilliant.

And they smile on stage! They have fun! They dance around with each other! How excellent is it to watch a very good band not posturing for once? Not trying too hard to be cool, but rather just being good at what they do?

Diarrhea Planet was preceded by their current tour mates Lovely Bad Things from La Mirada, California, a good if frantic band. While also fun to watch – their momentum never wanes – their poppy-sometimes-surfy punk tunes were blazingly fast, as if each song is the last of their set, as if each is the last they’ll ever play ever. Self-described as “multi-instrumental,” each member traded instruments often and their best songs were those with obvious Pixies and Sonic Youth influences like “Fried Eyes.”

Amherst garage punks California X opened the evening, too, with their brand of noisy fuzz and grunge. They’re the band Diarrhea Planet thanked on stage, saying, “You guys were so loud, I had to go to the bathroom three times.”

Coming from Diarrhea Planet, that’s sayin’ somethin’.