IT’S ONE OF the great rock ‘n’ roll problems: brains versus balls. If you sound too tough, nobody thinks you’re smart, and if you come across like a Pointdexter, you won’t get any respect. It’s something that would be awkward to discuss, but looms like B.O. in every metal and punk band’s practice space.You want to push the boundaries of rock music, try to take the standard guitar-drum-bass-singer thing in a different direction than the thousands of bands before you while still having a good time. It’s hard. Many have failed. Many will fail.Though some make it work, including Brooklyn’s Tournament.

Tournament sits dead center on the brains/balls equilibrium, a conglomerate of punk and metal sounds, but never trying too hard to be in either camp.The band’s debut LP Years Old, released earlier this year, is 32 minutes of good head-banging punk.There’s a tinge of heavy psych delays and distortion, though the songs never linger on any one riff. It’s punk, but you can tell the band’s got a lot more toys than its forefathers.The vocals sometimes sound like they’re being sung through a megaphone and every song has a few different sounding guitars, from slightly distorted to Melvins-like, fuzzed-out distorted.This is the brains side.

Unlike a lot of drone music, though, this band doesn’t let its pedals do all of the work.The songs are well crafted with plenty of surprises and builds that other bands can’t handle. Here, ahem, are their balls.

“We’re all very simplistic and guttural people so we wanted to put forth that in our album,” says guitarist Sean Kraft. “We recorded it all live in one room, no headphones or anything—just straight to tape.”

Immediately, I give bands more credit if they record this way. Not enough bands record live. Some of the best punk records of all time were done live, from Funhouse to In Utero; it just sounds better. And like both those albums, Years Old sounds dirty.There’s a filth sitting on the entire recording. On the album’s centerpiece, “Snuff News,” a fast, fuzzy bass rolls through the song while guitars feedback and shriek and singer Montana Masback coughs like he just took a huge hit from a skull shaped bong. In the breakdown, there’s a short guitar solo that sounds like a rusty gate to a cemetery swinging in the wind. It doesn’t last long.The guitar flies into a fast simple solo and back to the original killer riff for a great ending.

Much of the album uses a similar style; bass-heavy openings with manic guitars and reverbed vocals.The drumming definitely rests on the metal side, but that’s a good thing—the rhythm section lays solid groundwork for the guitars to try new things. Other than what we hear from Children or Krallice, it’s the most inventive guitar sound happening in the city.

The band’s not sure what to call it. And when I pushed, they told me that they’ve labeled it “Hardcore Gay Drug Punk.”

“I think we developed that one night when we were all really drunk and on ecstasy,” says Kraft. “It just kind of made sense.”

> Tournament

Dec. 30, Europa, 98 Meserole Ave. (betw Manhattan Ave. & Lorimer St.), Brooklyn, 718-383-5723; 8, $18.

Tournament’s Montana Masback.