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There's this little heavy metal band in Naples.

They cart their prized guitars and battered drums around to local bars, and they're slick with sweat when they play — hunched over and unleashing a gravelly bellow into a microphone, or spread eagle and spinning their heads in time to the music while their fingers dart over the strings.

They say the cops want to shut them down.

A Dank Season, the two-year-old project of five 20-somethings, including former Gulf Coast High students, named their latest album after a criminal charge: Battery on a L.E.O, or law enforcement officer. They wrote a song to go with it, which they say is about police officers abusing power (“The badge doesn't give you strength/She corrupts your mind,”) and the album’s cover depicts a photoshopped drawing of an officer with a bloody head wound.

Ever since a May concert in Fort Myers, the band says they've been targeted by local law enforcement agencies.

At best, the band claims, local cops are harrassing them, and intimidating the venues that hire them to play. At worst, they say they're being censored.

“The fact is it's art, and it's your art, and you get to express it any way you want,” lead singer Mike Keiper, 26, said Tuesday, a couple hours before launching a set at Lucky's@951, in Naples. Later that night, a friend of the band says a Collier County Sheriff's deputy stopped him in the parking lot to bad-mouth A Dank Season.

The Fort Myers Police Department says it has no reports documenting the May 5 concert, at which the band claims they were ordered outside Sundown's Sports Grill and Night Club. One of their friends had tried to give an officer a copy of the CD, they said, which apparently sparked a confrontation with the band.

“We're all thrown up against police cars,” Chris Bock, the 21-year-old bass player, said.“My guitar player, Mark, who has a little (criminal) history, was told he was going to have his eyes ripped out.”

Mark Good, whose nickname in school was Marktallica, was arrested four years ago in Lee County on a marijuana possession charge. He was given six months on county probation, court records show.

Ultimately, Bock said, the group was let go that May night without charge. But he said another bar was told two days there would be problems if A Dank Season played there.

Rene Nunez, an owner of Sundown's, recalled a conversation he had with the city police officers: “They told me it didn't matter, I could do whatever I wanted to do. But they said they'd greatly appreciate it if we'd consider them not playing here. I don't want any problems with cops, so I did it.” Nunez added that the band “brought it on themselves“ when the officer was shown the album cover.

A city police spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement that the agency is “aware of the band and we encourage city businesses to not participate in events that promote any kind of violence. With that said, there is a nationwide trend of rising violence toward police. Officers increasingly face hostile combative suspects. We are disappointed the Naples Daily News is facilitating the band's message.”

As far as A Dank Season is concerned, they were marked that night as the band that sings about harming cops — even though they insist that's not the meaning of the album. Bock says they support the presence of law enforcement in a society. He says they object to what they see as abuse of power by certain officers.

“It's like they say, one bad egg ruins a dozen,” said Keiper, the lead singer. “You get a couple cops out there that treat you like crap, that come up to your car when you get a ticket” — he lowered his voice and puffed out his chest — “I pulled you over because I've got a badge and I'm awesome.”

Since the May concert, the band says they've heard from other venue owners refusing to hire A Dank Season so long as they bring police scrutiny. The band figures they're being run out of business.

John Cappozzo, manager of the Smiling Dog Saloon in Lee County, said he would hire the band again so long as they didn't bring any “drama.”

“It's kind of being stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “You've got freedom of speech and everything like that, but at the same time it's kind of my responsibility that nothing bad happens here.”

Tuesday night was a battle of the bands at Lucky's. A Dank Season was the last to take the stage just after 11 p.m. Several dozen young bargoers stood in a pulsing, hand-thrusting semi-circle around the band. Another dozen or more mingled on the pavement outside, drinking in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

An unmarked patrol car idled at the opposite end of the parking lot, facing the bar.

The Collier County Sheriff's office confirmed that deputies were patrolling the area around Lucky's Tuesday night because it was estimated more than 200 people would be there.

“There were no disturbances throughout the night,” a spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail.

A bartender at Lucky's said she never even noticed the cops, but it's not unusual for an officer to hang out by the edge of the parking lot.

The set went smoothly. A Dank Season played a cover of Born on the Bayou laced with some curse words not found in the original. Keiper howled his way through their embattled album, sounding at times like the high- and low-pitch screams of a horror movie, talking back and forth.

Just after midnight, as the band was lugging out their equipment, Bock says a total of four patrol cars pulled up to the bar, and several followed the band members out when they left.

David Horath, 23, a longtime friend of several members of the band, said an officer noticed him looking at a copy of the album outside and called him over.

He said the officer called the band a vulgar name, indicating they were frightened of the cops, and told Horath — who says his uncle is a Collier County deputy — that the uncle would be ashamed of him for listening to their music.

“Definitely,” Horath said, when asked whether he thought local cops want to shut down the band. “But they can't do it. All they can is harrass them. The only way they can win is if A Dank Season backs down. And they won't.”