It's a sound that seems light years away from the track by legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk from which they take their name.
Speaking to guitarist-vocalist Shane Warbrooke, however, it seems the influence of the American composer is still present, albeit in a somewhat disguised form.
"I've been going through a pretty intense bebop phase for about seven years now, and I'm a massive Thelonious Monk fan," Shane says from Auckland.
"When I first got into him it was pretty much an internal monologue of 'Oh, someone's done everything I try to do in my guitar playing, just on piano 60 years ago'.
"In a way, it's shaped the sound of the band in that Bemsha was a vocalisation of the sound of a kick drum and hi-hat.
If you take the swing out of it, you've suddenly got a dance beat, and that pumping kick and open hi-hat sound is something that turns up a lot in our beats."
The Bemsha Swing, filled out by bass player Andrew Watts and a thunderous drum machine named Frankie, has just released its debut album, Against Friends and Lovers, via Auckland independent label Muzai Records.
Written over four years, Against Friends and Lovers is a showcase of Shane and Andrew's white-hot post-punk.
It nods to ex-Dunedinites Die! Die! Die! (particularly in Warbrooke's vocal delivery), while bringing the fury and speed found in Japanese noise-rock, such as Melt Banana.
Discussing the album's post-punk chops, Warbrooke draws seminal New York punk band Sonic Youth to the fore of the group's influence.
"Sonic Youth are big favourites of mine. We do fit in the indie-punk crossover kind of genre. I guess I got into Sonic Youth in high school through Max TV and spiralled out from there through no wave, punk, hardcore, noise, etc etc and the hymns of those 'genreligions' have stuck with me."
Against Friends and Lovers was first recorded in 2009, but due to production difficulties has only just been released.
"We ended up recording five versions of the album," Warbrooke says. "Three were lost due to computers dying, losing data, and just generally embracing disorder and discord as their main operating system.
"The other one was cobbled out of three years of different sounding recordings and as such had no flow. So we hunkered down and recorded the whole thing from scratch. We kept back-up copies all over Auckland just in case there was another self-combusting hard drive."
When you pack as much firepower as The Bemsha Swing, self-combustion should probably be expected. Catch the group next Friday at the Crown Hotel.
Co-founder and guitarist of seminal Australian punks The Saints, notable for the 1977 anthem (I'm) Stranded, Ed Kuepper visits Dunedin next week for three solo shows.
Also playing with post-punk outfit the Laughing Clowns and as a touring guitarist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kuepper's career stretches decades and touches genres from punk to semi-improvised radio-drama and experimental film scores.
Ed Kuepper plays Taste Merchants on October 18, the Penguin Club, Oamaru, on October 19 and the Dunedin Musicians Club on October 20.
