If you’ve ever known someone in a band, dated someone in a band, been friends with someone in a band, or even dated someone whose cousin knows someone in a band, then you’re aware of a cruel truism: it’s hard to keep three people, much less four or five, on the same page for long enough to write, record, and tour behind an album. Sometimes it’s hard just to get that many people in the same room together often enough to learn a set of songs. So if you’re not taken aback by what Bang Camaro have achieved over the past year, then you know nothing of the ego maladies, artistic squabbles, and other difficulties your average band must overcome during what’s commonly known as the formative stage. What started as one of those amusing ideas a couple of friends come up with after too many drinks has for guitarists Alex Necochea and Bryn Bennett become a full-time gig. And it doesn’t involve just two or three other musicians. More like 20.

“It was probably a year ago,” Necochea recalls over dinner and drinks at the B-Side Lounge. “We had recorded six songs, and we were sitting right over there, and we had no idea what we were going to do.”

“I think originally we were joking about growing moustaches, recording everything in my van, and calling the band Bang Camaro,” Bennett interjects with a grin. “But it grew into something bigger, and we can’t grow facial hair anyway. I mean, we’d basically written an indie-rock album together.” Bennett motions in Necochea’s direction: “He used to play with the Good North and Bleu. And I played with the Model Sons. But we all had a lot more fun playing the ‘Bark at the Moon’ guitar solo after we finished our own songs because we’re basically closet metalheads.”

Up to this point, there wasn’t anything unusual about what the duo had in mind. But once they got into the studio, that changed. “We’d decided to call ourselves Bang Camaro and we were going to write a song,” Bennett recalls. “Then, it was like, ‘What are we going to sing? Oh, well, we’ll just sing Bang Camaro.’ So we booked a little time in a studio, brought six of our friends in, and we had the best time. We just knew that we had to do something with it after that.”

The part Bennett leaves out has turned out to be the defining characteristic of Bang Camaro. It’s the part about the three-part harmonies and the choir-like vocals.

“We drink a lot,” Necochea explains somewhat apologetically. “In the ’80s, they had those huge operatic vocals. You listen to a Def Leppard record and there are 20 or 30 voices layered on top of one another. But they couldn’t re-create that sound live. Even now they can’t without racks of sequencers. And we’re not big-budget people. But we wanted that sound. So we thought we’d just get all of our buddies in the room. It was really just out of necessity that when we decided to try to pull it off live, we were going to have to have all those people up on stage with us. We knew it would definitely be a spectacle.”

Within a matter of months, Bang Camaro hadn’t just finished those first six songs, they’d put together a three-guitar band capable of playing massive metal riffs, as well as a choir drawn from bands like Taxpayer, Bon Savants, Noble Rot, the Distinguished Members, and the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra — guys who could pull off the three-part harmonies. Needless to say, the indie-rock project that had brought Necochea and Bennett together was on hold. Bennett: “Trying to manage 20 guys to do anything has been taking up most of our time.”

As on their first song, Bennett and Necochea decided to keep the lyrics to a minimum, the songs anthemic, and the guitars big and bold — to write “We Are the Champions” over and over again only with different catch phrases. Bennett: “We drink and come up with a funny phrase. The lyrics are, I like to say, minimalist.”

“Simple and fun,” Necochea adds with a laugh. “We wanted people who’d come to see us to be able to sing along with us by the time the chorus came around the second time. That was the idea.”

“Yeah, and the other point with every song we’ve written is that we want it to be a potential single,” Bennett returns. “Because I think things have gone back to the way they were in the ’50s. MP3s have made it so that people don’t really listen to whole albums; they just listen to their favorite singles, and that’s what they put on their iPod.”

Bang Camaro decided to use MySpace to test-drive those first six songs they’d recorded. Necochea: “Starting on June 1 of 2006, we released one song every two weeks through MySpace. We’d put out a single and X amount of people would download it. Then they’d come back two weeks later for the next single. And back then, when we talked about doing our first album, we wanted it to be a greatest-hits album.”

That’s not a bad way to characterize the 12-track debut album Bang Camaro will celebrate the release of this Saturday with a show at the Paradise. At least, anyone who has fond memories of ’80s metal overkill will have a hard time finding anything not to like about the tracks on the disc. Of course, the band already know that. Bennett: “A lot of marketing agencies, you have to pay a ton of money to find out what people like. We just used MySpace. We’ve ended up with all kinds of different fans. Some people remember the heyday of metal in the ’80s and they’re thanking us for bringing rock back. And then we have a bunch of 14-year-olds who have never really heard stuff like this. They’re just thanking us for not being emo.”

BANG CAMARO | Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | February 24 | 617.562.8880