The Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble tends to favor veterans of the Boston scene. The long-running battle of the bands/local rock festival has rewarded a ton of musicians with awesome and extensive resumes — see the members of recent winners One Fall, Set Fire, and Worshipper. Last year’s champs the Ghouls are a glaring and righteous exception.

“Going in with all the older bands I felt like our age might be a disadvantage,” Ghouls singer/guitarist George Danahy told the Boston Herald. “Everyone was coming in with fancy suitcases with their merch in it and three CDs of albums. I was like, ‘(expletive) we have one song out of Spotify and cardboard box.”

A year ago, all four members of the Ghouls — Danahy, guitarist Peter Trainor, bassist Jacob Babcock, drummer Bryce Maher — were still working on music degrees at University of Massachusetts Lowell. But the Ghouls crushed it at the 2024 Rumble with an absurd amount of live energy, ripping through raw punk rock spiked with little dashes of power pop, metal, and prog.

“A lot of the songwriting influences I have come from the Strokes, Weezer, bands like that,” Danahy said. “But as a guitarist, I was obsessed with the shred-y guitarists like Randy Rhodes, Eddie Van Halen, and Brian May especially.”

Technical skill, of which Danahy has a ton, can make songs feel cold. That’s not a problem for the Ghouls — listen to the track “Hellbound” for a perfect blend of skinned-knee rock and immaculate guitar licks.

Using the studio time they won at the Rumble, the Ghouls recorded a stunning debut that captures their live fury and fun — the band celebrates just-released “Handle With Care” June 6 at the Middle East. Of course, they have a lot more than the LP to celebrate from the past 12 months. The list of accomplishments include the Rumble win, four graduations, two Boston Music Awards nominations (Rock Artist of the Year, New Artist), a Rock Artist win and stellar live performance at the BMAs.

“Yes, yes, to say the least, yes, it’s been a wild year for me,” Danahy said. “When we won the Rumble, I had to go to graduation the next weekend. We signed up for the Rumble the day before the submissions closed and… I ran to SquareSpace that night and spent three hours making a website, and I had COVID at the time. Then we got in and rehearsed every single week while I was working on my capstone project for graduation.”

It’s been a rush, a whirlwind, a chaotic mess — all descriptors that could lovingly apply to the Ghouls music. Danahy has warmly embraced it all.

One of the past year’s top moments came during the band’s December BMA performance at a sold out Big Night Live. The BMAs are a tough stage thanks to an audience filled with fans of wildly different genres. But from the stage, the Ghouls led a massive singalong of “You can’t stop screaming, I’m up here dreaming, you’re going to make me go find someone else!” during their song “Game.”

“That felt amazing,” Danahy said. “It always feels good when I can get people to sing along during that part, sing along to lyrics I wrote. But I’d never seen it done by so many people.”

Hopefully, he hears it sung by thousands more during the band’s next epic year.

For tickets and details, visit theghouls.net.