Dublin Death Patrol band members Willy Langenhuizen and Chuck Billy pose for a photo at Dublin HS.(Jay Solmonson/Tri-Valley Herald)

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

DUBLIN — In the late’70s, Dublin was farms, barns and backyards. At night these would fill with teens, alcohol and rock and punk music — as best as those teens could play it. 

These kids grew up listening to bands like the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols. Out of that scene and — literally — one neighborhood, several childhood friends came together in their quest for musical destruction, calling themselves Rampage. 

“Those were the days when you got pulled over, and you had beer in your car and you were underage; (and) they’d pour it out,” vocalist Chuck Billy remembers. “The cops knew you by name. They were cool about it.” 

The kids got into fights, spray-painted their names throughout town and played barns, backyards and wherever else they could. Then the band broke up, and members went their separate ways. A few, such as Billy, went on to stardom as lead singer of Testament. Most did not. 

They held on to their love of their home turf, and after meeting up again in 2005 at Dublin’s Hooters restaurant they formed thrash group Dublin Death Patrol, which performs two Bay Area shows this week before heading overseas. 

Most of the boys from “the Patrol” grew up in homes surrounding Dublin High School, bassist Willy Langehnuizen recalled. They were 5 or 6 when they first met through T-ball games. When they reached their teensthey got into rock with Kiss, Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent. 

“The core of our group … lived within a nine-iron of here,” said the bassist, who goes by Willy Lange, making a sweeping motion with his arm, of the block surrounding the school. “Everybody in the band went to Dublin High.” 

They couldn’t even tune their guitars when they began playing in bands. They quickly fell into the harder and edgier rock. 

“Going to (concerts in) the City by these punk bands, we saw the initiation of the mosh pit,” Lange said. “Back then, the mosh pit … was a place where people got their butts kicked. We took that back to the Valley. 

“We were trying to be those big tough kids we saw in the City.” 

Rampage was part of the new “thrash” movement — hard guitars, crashing drums, lots of guttural yelling. 

“I like to think that we helped create that genre,” Lange said. “We definitely had an attitude. We would drive around town … and used to spray-paint our name everywhere.” 

The image of the band as a bunch of punks was right on, Lange said. They went as far as calling the cops on themselves to add street cred. At one show someone threw a tear gas canister into the house where they were playing. 

“The fire department came, everyone was stampeding over everyone else. Back then, that was cool for us,” Lange said. “We made the paper.” 

All that suddenly came to an end in’82 when the band called it quits. Diamond, a band fronted by a Van Halen roadie, came through town and recruited Lange. Billy quit to go to Chabot College before moving on to bigger things. Drummer Troy Luccketta went on to play with Tesla, and singer Steve “Zetro” Souza became the lead singer for a band called Legacy. 

For Lange, Diamond was a short-term project, and by the next year he had moved on to another, Laaz Rockit. Prior to his first show with the new band, word got back to him that Lars Ulrich of Metallica had made fun of him on a San Francisco radio show. 

In retaliation, he spread the word that the Patrol — the Dublin gang of thrash-heads — was about to “inflict maximum damage on them.” 

Lange said Metallica called for a truce, and they have been on good terms since. 

“Our reputation was back then that you didn’t want to mess with us,” he said. 

Souza, meanwhile, decided to switch from Legacy to another band, Exodus. He recommended that Billy replace him. 

“That was the first and only audition. I went down there, … brought a case of beer and got them drunk,” Billy said. “Next thing I know, I’m the singer.” 

After Billy joined, Legacy switched names to Testament and quickly became one of the biggest metal bands to emerge from the hair-rock 1980s. The band released six albums in 10 years for Atlantic Records, including 1987’s “The Legacy,” followed the next year by “The New Order” and in’89 the very popular “Practice What You Preach.” 

Testament has toured with Slayer, Megadeath, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. 

In 2005, Laaz Rockit was invited to play a reunion show at Holland’s Dynamo metal festival. Lange, now running his family’s mail-hauling business, Lange Trucking, found out that Testament, with friend Billy, was already signed up to play and decided it was a no-brainer to accept the invitation. 

“I hadn’t been in the scene forever, and I was surprised how young the kids were who were into thrash,” Lange recalled. “They are coming up to us and telling us we need to put out some new old school.” 

Lange spoke with Billy and when they returned, they persuaded several others from the Dublin thrash scene to meet them at Hooters. The Patrol decided they still had some old school left in them. 

The end product had Billy and Souza doing vocals; Lange, Souza’s brother John and Billy’s brother Eddie on bass; another Billy brother, Andy, as well as John Hartsinck, Steve Robello and Greg Bustamante on guitar; and Luccketta and Danny Cunningham on drums. 

The thrash mega-group could have called themselves anything, but they wanted “Dublin” to be front and center. The city is as much a part of them as their music. 

“It’s where our heart is,” Lange said.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.