A great rock-and-roll chorus is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.

Take the hook of “Cocoon,” one of several singles off the debut album of Catfish & The Bottlemen: “Fuck it if they talk; fuck it if they try and get to us. ‘Cause I’d rather go blind than let you down.” Pair those lines with a soaring melody and some chugging guitars, and you’ve got the makings of a rock anthem, just add a crowd.

It’s a simple formula, but it’s working in spades for the Welsh quartet, fronted by the fast-talking 22-year-old Van McCann. His band’s first album, The Balcony, released last fall in the U.K. and in January stateside, is a tight 11-track set of gritty garage rock and huge choruses. It’s straightforward and catchy, and it’s proven to be polarizing: British magazines like NME and Q called the record dated and dull, but the band’s quickly swelling fanbase doesn’t seem to care.

“Magazines tell people what their favorite band is,” says McCann, calling from a tour stop in Belfast. “But with us, it’s people out on a Saturday night seeing us play, then telling their friends: ‘This is my new favorite band.’”

McCann isn’t kidding. Catfish & The Bottlemen sold out a two-night run at London’s 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy last November, as well as many dates on a six-week U.S. club tour. This summer, they’ll hit the stage at Leeds and Reading Festivals in the U.K., as well as the massive Fuji Rock Festival in Japan.

Catfish & The Bottlemen began when McCann was just 14—a group of friends in love with The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, more enthusiastic than able. “We cut the bottom strings off an electric guitar to sound like a bass, and amplified an acoustic to make it sound electric,” says McCann.

Early shows were just as ramshackle: The teens would set up on university campuses, outside soccer matches and in public squares. “We’d turn up in ninja outfits, rev a generator and play wherever we could in a town in the afternoon, handing out CDs and telling people where we’d play that night,” says McCann. “That’s how we sold out our first gigs.”

The genesis of The Balcony relied equally on word-of-mouth. After each show, McCann says, he’d sit at the bar and take feedback from fans. Which songs worked, which didn’t. McCann’s relatable story-songs clicked with crowds early on. “The songs go where the words go,” he says. “I’m telling stories, and when I get to the part where a girl is shouting at me, that’s where the chorus comes in.”

With more than five years of gigging experience under their belts, the quartet (including guitarist Johnny Bond, bassist Benji Blakeway and drummer Bob Hall) entered the studio with Jim Abbiss, who produced Arctic Monkeys’ legendary debut, prepared to lay down the 11 crowd favorites. Less than three weeks later, The Balcony was born. All those guerrilla gigs had paid off: the record cracked the U.K. Top 10 and was soon certified gold.

But Catfish & The Bottlemen aim for world domination. Or, in rock-and-roll terms: “I want to play wherever has the biggest speakers, the biggest audience, the biggest stage,” says McCann. “The louder the crowd, the higher they can jump and the more people diving over the barriers, the more goosebumps I have on the back of my neck.”

McCann goes on to compare his band’s ascent to a boxer before a fight. To this barely-legal (in the States) frontman, his music isn’t a paycheck or a magazine cover. It’s a mission, every bit as desperate as the quarreling lovers that inhabit his songs. There’s no time for subtlety.

“If you come out and say you want to play stadiums, and you fail, you look like a nugget, don’t you?” he says. “But then, we’ve always looked like dicks, so I don’t give a fuck.”