Metal trio Hammerdown headlines a night of free headbanging bliss at the Blue Fin.

When Walt Combs was 13, his love affair with hard rock began at Kmart. Sandwiched between Fleetwood Mac and Springsteen’s Born to Run was KISS’s 1975 classic Alive! Combs was entranced before he heard one note on the record.

“I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,’ because it was such a cool-looking album cover with [Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley] on the front,” he says.

Nearly four decades later, and an extended heavy metal education highlighted by Judas Priest, UFO and Black Sabbath, Combs is living out his headbanger fantasy as the guitarist-singer of his own band, Hammerdown, who play Blue Fin on Saturday.

The outfit formed about eight years ago when Combs, drummer Todd Townsend and bassist-singer Bryant Miller (formerly of Nasty Habit) got together to jam at Townsend’s 40th birthday party as T-40.

“It just kind of snowballed from there and morphed into Hammerdown,” Combs explains. “We’re not a tribute [band] but we do a lot of the old-school hard rock we all grew up on because we love that music. We’re old guys enjoying ourselves.”

Whether it’s the abrasive fuzz-tone overload coating the cluttered riffs of Sabbath’s “Paranoid” or the bellicose metal-head favorite Iron Maiden’s “Wrathchild,” the trio very rarely strays from the original composition of any tunes they cover.

“We try to stick to what they play and not do our own thing,” Combs says. “I keep it note for note because I know that when I go see the big players in concert I want to hear that original vibe.”

Soon, Hammerdown will appear even less like a metal tribute band: They’re working on a few original tunes that they’ll be incorporating into their sets in the near future.

HAMMERDOWN AND DICKIE DANGLE & THE SNOT ROCKETS perform at 10pm (doors 9pm) Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Blue Fin Cafe & Billiards, 685 Cannery Row, Monterey. Free. 717-4280.

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