When Tenacious D vocalist Jack Black made the claim he and his bandmate Kyle Glass were classically trained to “rock your fucking socks off,” they didn’t have Mark Mallman in mind.

Mallman is one true incarnation of a classically trained musician who has turned to music’s dark side – rock ‘n’ roll.

“When I was 13, I started listening to Doobie Brothers,” Mallman says. “I liked that rock lifestyle.”

For Mallman, that very rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle is still something he embodies to this day.

`His last studio release, 2004’s “Mr. Serious,” won his classic, rock-influenced style enough praise to send him out on tour nationwide. He says the album adequately captured the essence of the 70s rock vibe he was going for.

“I basically accomplished what I set out to do,” he says. “It’s not terribly modern, but I’m not concerned with modern.

“If it were up to me, my songs would be something you played on a record, not a CD.”

His latest release also rewarded him with the opportunity to tour across the Atlantic and play to new audiences in Europe.

He says he was happy with how the tour went despite some equipment being stolen in London, which included his drummer and some police officers chasing the robber through the streets of London.

Even though the bandit managed to evade them, Mallman seems content to be left with being able to heckle his drummer, who avoided punching the robber, and about being the only nonviolent American.

Despite any unpleasantness, Mallman managed to have some fun before returning to the Midwest.

“I had a pretty extreme time in Amsterdam by myself,” he says. “So after four days, when I got back, I was in a different state of mind.”

Since his homecoming, he has kept busy – he recently finished scoring an upcoming video game about Marines and has begun work on his new record. Granted, video game scores are not the most important thing on his mind, but his new record seems to be coming along nicely and letting him explore the darker side of rock and roll.

“There’s a theme of evil, like Satan,” he says. “It’s really dark and really fun, and kind of like that movie ‘Sin City’ – a little noir.”

This shift to a more unholy attempt at songwriting, he says, came from his past albums being too middle-of-the-road.

“I’ve had more balanced records and I wanted to have a more extreme record. I’ve taken 70s classic songwriting to the maximum – I’m sort of bored with it. The new songs are more like inventions.”

Whatever the outcome of his new material, Mallman is adamant about the fact that it will truly reflect his own lifestyle.

He says musicians portraying themselves as something they aren’t gets under his skin.

There is little doubt that Mallman injects himself into his music every chance he gets. He seems to continually find ways to challenge himself musically and physically.

The best evidence of this comes from his 2004 “Marathon 2” performance, during which he played what he calls the “longest rock song ever performed in the world.” With the song clocking in at more than 52 hours long and using 600 pages of rhyming lyrics, he’s probably right.

Though people have called him crazy for performing these rock marathons – the first lasted 26.2 hours – it’s just one of many of the things that keep him going.

“It’s something I like to do,” he says. “Each time you wonder, ‘How am I going to survive this?’ I like that. I feed off that.”