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How would you feel? Your band has been together since 1999, struggling through lineup changes, two US tours, hundreds of shows, an album and two EPs, without so much as a write-up in the local weekly. Finally, after dropping your most recent CD last year — an untitled, self-released disc of skull-crushing riffs — you get a review in the bible of modern metal, Metal Maniacs, and the photo that runs with it is of another band.

In the case of the San Francisco four-piece Walken, it was a photo of a three-piece party-rock outfit from Sioux City, Iowa, whose MySpace "sounds like" reads: "Rush meets Metallica meets Blink 182 meets Nickelback meets Matchbox 20 meets Live meets Red Hot Chili Peppers." With all due respect to Neil Peart and pre-Load era Metallica — seriously?

"They're total dicks," Shane Bergman, 25, vocalist and bassist for the Original Walken — otherwise known as Vintage Walken or Walken Classic — says during an interview at the Western Addition Victorian he shares with roommate and guitar player Sean Kohler, 27.

It's the crack of noon and the guys are posted up on the couch, drinking coffee, and eating toast and jam in their finest sweatpants. "I'd written the guy a long time ago," he continues. "'Hey, this isn't cool. We've had this name for seven or eight years. We've actually put out stuff and toured the US. It's not cool.' And they were like, 'Oh, it doesn't really matter — we're in different states.' I just let it slide. And then I pick up that" — he points to the magazine — "and I'm, like, 'Well, now it's gone too far.' You look through and see a picture of those tools ... "

There have been more Walkens, including a band from Melbourne that played weddings and broke up in 2004. The reason for the popularity, most likely, is Christopher Walken's 2000 "more cowbell" skit on Saturday Night Live. While this settles the name game with pretenders enamored with the sketch, it raises the question: if not for "more cowbell," then why "Walken"?

Like the actor, dancer, and celebrity beer-can-chicken chef, Walken is hard to pin down. When walking in on Walken's live set and hearing the crushing, dual-guitar assault "Bitch Wizard," from their untitled, self-released 2007 EP, all pummeling drums and clean backing vocals contrasting with deathly, oven-throat howls, it's difficult to characterize the group — which includes guitarist Max Doyle, 26, and drummer Zack Farwell, 29 — as anything but metal. Perhaps "fuckin' metal" might be more apt. But it hasn't always been so clear-cut. "Our Unstoppable record, it was just a weird record," Kohler says of the self-released 2004 full-length. "We thought we were being all revolutionary having these funny rock songs, with funk songs and blues songs ... "

"And math rock," Bergman interjects. Unstoppable was Walken's version, to steal a phrase from Lou Reed, of 'growing up in public.'"

"Most people sit in their garage when they're coming up with their sound, but we were actually ...