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ANOTHER Up-and-Coming local act — and one that’s shared the occasional bill with the Lot Six — is Runner and the Thermodynamics, who’ll be celebrating the release of their homonymous debut on Ace Fu next Saturday, April 10, at T.T. the Bear’s Place. They’re a hard-driving power trio who revel in screaming guitar, propulsive bass, and animalistic drum wallop. In short: all the shirtless sonic hedonism of ’70s rock and roll.

And they like Thin Lizzy. A lot. Sitting at the Model Café in Allston over bourbon and Buds, with the jukebox blasting "The Boys Are Back in Town," guitarist/vocalist Marc Pinansky and drummer Roger Knight are trying to agree on a favorite record.

"I always go back and forth, but it’s the earlier stuff I like," says Pinansky.

"Jailbreak is their near-perfect album," Knight avers. "Bad Reputation is really good too."

"I think as a band we waffle between Jailbreak and Fighting," Pinansky responds. "Although Vagabonds . . . I dunno if you could . . . not to get nerdy or anything, but that one’s pretty cool too. I like ’em all. We even like the later stuff. Well, except for Renegade."

" ‘Thunder & Lightning’ is a pretty good song," Knight counters.

But these are no mere fans. They got to open for their reunited heroes in Cleveland not long ago. Of course, Phil Lynott has been dead since 1986, and golden-age guitarist Brian Robertson and drummer Brian Downey were nowhere to be found. Instead it was just ax man Scott Gorham with a string of second-rate guitarists from the band’s cheese-metal twilight.

"We kind of got our hopes up," Pinansky admits. "We were romanticizing it all the way out there, hoping they’d play all these old obscure tunes. They didn’t even do anything before Jailbreak. But we went over really well. They had the name and the tunes, but we had the spirit."

Indeed, on "So Sorry," with its guitar and bass riffs descending in octave-apart unison and its soulfully screamed lyrics of lost love and regret, and "The Dude’s Old Lady," its melody based on a churning bass and its urban vignette relayed in a rhythmic street-smart stutter, the threesome evoke Thin Lizzy’s melodic, riff-heavy city slang. But they do a lot more than that, their songs drawing on the bombast of Grand Funk Railroad and the Who tempered with the thoughtful lyrics of Big Star and Kinks and the tuneful cool of the Strokes. "Damsels in Denim" is a taut punk sprint accented with piano and tubular bells. "Powerlines" draws from both sunny ’70s radio pop like the Ravyns and the Raspberries and MC5-style mid-song meltdowns. "Mechanical Heart" is an infectious mid-tempo plod that beats the band’s blooze-based forebears at their own game.

Although their debut is terrific, the Runners’ renown stems primarily from the abandon of their live shows, which are driven by drummer Knight’s manic, Moon-loony theatrics. "When I first saw him play, I was like, I gotta play with that guy," says Pinansky.

In fact, Knight’s blur-of-motion thrashing causes his kit to fall apart on stage on fairly regular basis. "My equipment’s pretty shoddy," he says sheepishly.

"I think it’s more romantic than that," chides Pinansky. "You really like the drums and really wanna play them so bad, but you’re just too scatterbrained and excited to think about setting them up properly."

"Before, it was every song. Now it’s, like, every two songs," says bassist Mike Oor, who took on low-end duty after the canning of the band’s original bassist. Oor had been a guitarist and had never really played bass before. He half-seriously calls the switch a "sacrifice," but when reminded that he gets to be the Phil Lynott in this band of Lizzy acolytes, he jokes that "I’m more like Eddie Van Halen on bass. I play lead bass."

Pinansky’s role as chief songwriter notwithstanding, Runner and the Thermodynamics are, like all good power trios, a democratic band. They’ve come some way from their first "disastrous" gig at J.J. Foley’s downtown. New York Times music scribe Jon Pareles has sung their praises, as has Amerindie avatar Mike Watt. They’ve landed on the cover of college-radio journal CMJ. And they must surely be the only band in history to have opened for Thin Lizzy, Alice Cooper, the Von Bondies, Dillinger Escape Plan, and — for one fleeting New York City night — a near-comatose Old Dirty Bastard.

"He was totally catatonic," says Oor.

"Drooling," says Knight. "He didn’t even rap for the first 10 minutes."

"But the hip-hop kids dug us," says Pinansky. "It was crazy."

They band are about to head down to South by Southwest in Austin, stopping off in Kentucky for a show with the Drive-By Truckers. They’re also due to be fitted for some jeans, since one SxSW gig is being co-sponsored by Levi’s. "I don’t think we have to wear ’em," Pinansky reassures his band mates. "We just get free shit!" Good things are happening.

"I always felt like it could be a split second between playing Foleys and opening for Alice Cooper," says Pinansky. "I feel like we’re on the cusp of something." Still, he adds, "these are the best times, scraping your way up, fighting to get what you want."

The Lot Six open for the Distillers this Saturday, April 3, at Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call (617) 262-2437. Runner and the Thermodynamics hold their CD-release party next Saturday, April 10, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square; call (617) 492-BEAR.