THE THREE MEMBERS of Ovipositor don't look like they'd make that much noise. The band presents an unassuming and even nerdy front: Band members could easily be mistaken for dads – an early incarnation of the band even played a child's birthday party.

But they do deliver the noise, a prog-punk mix that resembles Pere Ubu on a caffeine overdose. A recent show at the relocated Balazo Gallery – now Balazo 18, named for its Mission and 18th Street coordinates – showed off the trio's dense, aggressive elements: Colin Frangos's deft guitar squealings, Mark Pino's thunderous drumming, and Matt Carter's thick bass lines.

Biology majors can tell the music isn't supposed to be pretty: The band's name is a scientific term for a female insect's tendril that deposits eggs externally. Ewww. The band Ovipositor doesn't ooze or drip anything, instead opting for a crisp, frenzied sound, like local progsters Rumah Sakit with a heavier punk edge or King Crimson if they just plain rocked out.

Free jazz plays no small role in the band's sound. Frangos got an earful of the stuff while he was a student in Chicago, where he befriended saxophonist and MacArthur Foundation grantee Ken Vandermark. Crazy sounds are in Frangos's blood – for Halloween, he wants to perform in character as screaming '60s pop band the Monks. And he'll open Ovipositor's late-August show as part of the duo 28 Minutes of Noise, which plans to live up to its name down to the last second. The 28 Minutes group was spawned by an ongoing CD project titled Music for College DJs to Talk Over (Arbeit Macht Dinge).

Ordinarily a denizen of Oakland's Stork Club, Ovipositor has begun to call Balazo 18 its Mission District home. The gallery's owners are thrilled with the huge new space, but the transformation from a closed-down restaurant to a hip gallery and club is still in its infancy. Not all the booths and equipment have been torn out yet, and scrubbing the grease from the floor – we're talking 30 years of cheap Chinese food – was a monumental labor in itself.

Naturally, the Balazo music space is a bit unorthodox. It's in the kitchen, where deep, half-demolished sinks still line one wall. One woman nearly knocked over a heavy slab that appeared to be a former countertop. Cramped and dark, it was like a show in a buddy's parents' basement – except for the beckoning alcohol in the next room, of course.

Following sets by local rockers Zero Mass and oddball Portland, Ore., combo King Hen (think echoey surf guitar with trombone backing), Ovipositor dove in with "Santiago Botero Will Piss on Your Graves," a crackling instrumental with a thumpy beat and fast, choppy chords. (The title refers to a Tour de France cyclist who – gasp! – doesn't happen to be American.)

The entire set was dusted with Frangos's splintering guitar solos, packed with quicksilver squeals and buzzes and channeling the iconoclasm of Sonny Sharrock. Some songs took prog rock cues, shifting phases suddenly or mining an odd time signature as in "Friends and Neighbors," a downright happy Ornette Coleman cover that had Frangos declaring, "Friends and neighbors, that's where it's at."

Frangos's detached, half-spoken vocals twisted many songs with a sardonic kind of surrealism. "Ronnie and Chad" began with aggressive punk spasms but broke down into a free-floating middle with a slow narrative about Chad having to amputate Ronnie's arm ("Let's do it tomorrow at noon / But Chad, isn't that when you take your lunch hour?"). "Railroad Man" came closer to pop sing-along territory, with guitar parts thick in Residents-like dissonance.

As an added challenge, the band spent the whole set facing a video monitor that silently played some vintage burlesque hour, like after-hours TV circa 1963. The crew had launched the program as a between-acts diversion and left it running. "Hey, look, it's Bettie Page!" Pino twice exclaimed between songs.

Having proved its worth by the end of the set, the band suddenly cranked into its fastest song, "Mexican Space Program," with its giddy-up snare-drum beat and cartoonish cowboy guitar. That led into "Ayler," and the band's urgent chords and dissonant guitar fireworks melted into a few minutes of cavernous, slow improv. Balazo can't hold too big a crowd, true, but Ovipositor's name is getting spread far beyond the converted kitchen walls. After the show, the band learned that Tom Herman of Pere Ubu had agreed to play a few songs with them at the Stork Club Aug. 12. Wonder if he's available for birthday parties. Ovipositor plays Aug. 27, 9 p.m., Balazo 18, 2183 Mission, SF. (415) 255-7227. (Craig Matsumoto)