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When Nik Teffeteller auditioned for the cynical guys in Beyond Our Years, he lived up to his stage name — Omar Hollywood.

Drummer Dustin Thomas, guitarist Bo Mayberry and bassist Mak McNair had tried out dozens of singers over the course of almost 18 months, and none of them worked out. They knew the band they were putting together had potential, but without a singer, they knew they were dead in the water before ever even leaving port.

Enter Teffeteller, looking to get back into music after a two-year break from his previous project, Eastbank. He found Beyond Our Years on the Knox Shows Internet bulletin board, and his persistence finally landed him an in-person audition.

“I kept e-mailing the drummer, but they were kind of dodging me, I think,” Teffeteller told The Daily Times this week, chuckling at the memory. “I think they had had a lot of bad luck and were pretty jaded by this point. They wouldn’t give me their last names, their personal e-mails, their phone numbers. Finally, I told them I had a demo of me singing backup for Eastbank, and they told me to send it to them — one of those ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ type of things.

“I told them I would give it to them in person, because I knew I would have a fighting chance if I could get them to meet me. I went in, and it was the three of them basically interviewing me. I jumped on the couch, threw my arms behind my head and acted like I’d known these guys for years. Basically, I looked around, and I was getting the ‘you’re a nice guy’ kind of vibe, and then they asked to hear me sing. I looked around and I didn’t see any instruments or any equipment, so I just stood up and sang a capella, just to show them how loud I could sing without music.

“I think we clicked on the spot,” Teffeteller added. “Basically, I joined this band through confidence.”

With Teffeteller on board, Beyond Our Years shifted gears into overdrive. Teffeteller quickly assumed the helm, urging his bandmates to hit the ground running. With Eastbank, he said, the members took their time and planned everything deliberately and methodically. With Beyond Our Years, Teffeteller urged his bandmates to seize the moment.

The band’s four-song EP, “A Revenge With Two Names,” was hastily put together, but it practically overflows with potential. Driven by Thomas’s rapid-fire drumming and McNair’s heavy artillery basslines, the songs throb with a raw sort of energy, like fresh lava bubbling up from a hot and smoking mound of scorched earth. Mayberry wields his guitar like a machine gun, spraying riffs over Teffeteller’s rock-solid vocals. Again, Teffeteller lives up to his stage name — there’s an almost-theatrical quality to his vocals, an urgency that, even when he veers into screamo territory and roars like a Great Dane scalded by hot grease, he doesn’t lose control.

The only downside to “A Revenge” is its length — at only four songs, it leaves the listener anxious for more and fascinated by the possibility of what’s to come.

For Teffeteller, those possibilities have re-energized his enthusiasm for playing rock ‘n’ roll. As the bass player for Eastbank, he thought that band was going places, and it may very well have ... at least until it imploded.

“We spent a lot of money on equipment and got a spec deal with a guy in Knoxville, and we spent three months recording,” said Teffeteller, who lives in Maryville and works at Sullivan’s Downtown. “But the producer decided that our singer wasn’t the right person for that project, and because he owned the equipment, he yanked it all when he left, and we had to start over. But with a blow like that, there comes a lot of internal problems, and we just couldn’t get past it.

“I told myself that if I got back into a band, I wouldn’t want to do it for the fame and the glory. I knew that the next time I started a band, I wanted to sing, and I think I have a lot to say at this point in my life. But I wanted to do it grassroots style — playing in dive bars, shaking hands and doing it from the group up rather than trying to impress people.”

It took two years for Teffeteller to get back into music. During that period, he built up a repertoire of original material and looked carefully for the best fit. Once Beyond Our Years gelled, however, the gloves came off and caution went the way of the wind.

“We wrote songs and wrote songs, and we probably went into the studio before we should have, but I told the guys I would rather do everything before we were ready, kind of like a sink-or-swim kind of deal,” he said. “Basically, we’ve only been formed as this group for about six months, but we’re trying to move as fast as we can.

“These guys are really good musicians, and we’re ready for our first show (tonight). And we’re ready to meet our goals — by next summer, we want to play Blue Cats and come out with a full-length album."