Disturb the Peace is probably the most successful heavy metal band the tiny town of Telluride, has ever seen, for the simple reasons that a) high school kids pack their shows and b) their performances, profile and mere presence have succeeded in freaking the bejesus out of square adults everywhere.

“Everyone looks at our metal shirts and thinks we wanna destroy,” says bassist Shawn Swain, 17.

“This is not exactly a metal community,” says drummer Max Bregman, 16.

You may have seen their concert poster. It’s the one with a horned skeleton-demon holding a dozen skulls and advertising the fact that Disturb the Peace is playing tonight at 8 p.m. at the Fly Me to the Moon Saloon.

You may have heard their music, which Mozart lovers will find as soothing and melodic as a bone graft.

“Bring the age of darkness, now witness my pain!” growls a song on the band’s MySpace page. “The skin is peeled back to reveal the darkness in me!”

Singer Christian Johnston, 18, is aware of how those lyrics may seem to people who don’t own any Marilyn Manson albums. So he says it clearly, forcefully, and early:
“I don’t worship the devil.”

In a town of hippy-happy tie-dyed t-shirts and faded North Face jackets, these kids slouch through the streets in brain-bandaging bandanas, black t-shirts from The Black Dahlia Murder and orange ball caps with “666” and the names of their favorite bands, such as “Cannibal Corpse,” written all over them.

And if you spent 1976 through 2001 in a coma, and had therefore never heard of Black Sabbath or Twisted Sister or seen “The Osbournes” on MTV and learned that death metal (along with rap and glam and emo) is 99 percent swagger and posture and show, these kids could seem to be in danger of suddenly reaching down to bite the head off your Chihuahua.

The last time an article about this band appeared in a newspaper (they were called Special Bus then), a few square-as-a-fudge-brownie parents held an old-fashioned 1950s-style “Reefer Madness” freakout, worried what the community would think, making their sons apologize from the stage of the Opera House.

The question was: apologize for what? For making good music? For getting kids amped on rock and roll? Did the parents also demand that Goya apologize for his “Saturn” painting, that Washington Irving ask forgiveness for “Sleepy Hollow,” and that James Joyce say “sorry” for “Ulysses”?

But since that time, Special Bus / Disturb the Peace have played a number of shows, all packed. They’ve got 10 original songs, and a demo CD with four songs they’re ready to sell. Tonight, they’ve even got an opening act, Lane Smith and his highly respectable and totally non-threatening acoustic guitar.

Now, the parents are coming around.

“My parents are just glad I’m doing something creative,” said Swain.

“They’re still not into the cussing and stuff,” says guitarist Cameron Johnston, 17. “But they’re accepting our music more.”

The Johnstons’ father, a man who lists Ronald Reagan as one of his heroes, and says the people he’d most like to meet are Rush Limbaugh and Billy Graham, seems to be proud of the band. On his own MySpace page, the dad urges people to check out Disturb the Peace.