With Tiger Army, commitment runs deep

Question: What’s scarier than an angry tiger in seething mid-chomp, its fangs flaunting voraciously? Answer: One with bat wings!

And yet, as the band’s website proves (just click on the photo section), Tiger Army fans from Hull, England, to Kingwood, Texas, have taken this “tiger bat” symbol and tattooed it all over themselves as a sign of painful devotion -- including the guy who got one on his Adam’s apple.

It’s fitting, because the music of Tiger Army is dependent on pained dedication. Grinding guitars and rebellious energy meet with darkly romantic lyrics and a psychobilly sensibility that’s sensitive but aggro, and, yes, totally emo too.

“The tiger bat was a concept that I designed and just on the basis of imagery; it can communicate what the band is about,” singer-guitarist Nick 13 says from his home in Los Angeles. “Adult [tigers] spend the majority of their lives alone. There’s a metaphor there with the way some people live their lives, while other people are more of a herd mentality and don’t think for themselves. I guess in our lyrics the symbol is a metaphor for the night and people like us. Daytime people are group people. Nighttime people are solitary, nonconformist. So the bat wings express that nocturnal energy.”

Tiger Army has been touring “six or seven of [its] 10 years,” says Nick, whose band mates have been a rotating cast, currently played by Jeff Roffredo on stand-up bass and James Meza on drums.

Their new album, “Music From Regions Beyond,” took Nick three years to write.

“I’m not a very literal writer,” he says.

Instead, he’s inspired by dreams and “guided by the subconscious.” The result: openhearted lyrics that he suspects are what fans connect with deepest.

“It’s an honor to have my music be the center of that devotion,” he says. “I see something that I relate to there, that is who I was when I was a teenager. I’ve always connected to music on a deep, almost spiritual level.”

-- Giselle Zado Wasfie

[email protected]

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TIGER ARMY

WHERE: The Wiltern, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday

PRICE: $19

INFO: (213) 380-5005