They be young but the teenagers making up local band Black Swade are surprising audiences with their mature sound as they gain popularity and get set to release their first full-length album.
"Sometimes when we are plugging in our guitars people are like, 'oh no they are going to play death metal,'" said lead guitarist Scott Verbeek, 14.
"But then when we play, we are pretty damn good," added bass guitarist Liam Alvernini, 14.
Drummer Iain Rommel, 14, lead singer Luke Kyle, 13, and rhythm guitarist Alex Toews, 13, make up the rest of the of the five member band, which writes their own songs and describes their sound as "basic straight-forward rock."
"We don't play emo or screamo [styles of music]," said Rommel. "emo is stuff other people like and screamo is like emo but they just scream."
All five performers attend Don Ross Secondary and are all entering grade 9, except Toews who is entering grade 8. They joined forces at the end of grade 7 when several members of the group were playing at the Mamquam Elementary sports day.
"Me, Scott [Verbeek] and Alex [Toews] were playing a couple of songs on Sports Day, back when we were crappy," said Rommel. "Luke [Kyle] had his own band and we liked his singing and we decided to join bands. Liam [Alvernini] didn't join at first because he didn't think he could match our standards but then he did."
After they joined forces the band came up with the name Black Swade, inspired by a cologne advertisement.
"There was a lady sitting on the bottle and she was pretty voluptuous," said Alvernini. "We wanted to be associated with it."
"It smelt good," said Rommel. "But we changed the spelling of Suede to Swade in case we got famous and then we couldn't be sued."
Since then the group has played several gigs including several performances at Merlin's in Whistler, where they expect to play again this winter.
In April, the group also won the Men of Sea to Sky Talent Show where the boys said their sound differed from the rest of the acts performing.
"It was like a ladies night out thing, there was people singing and stripping," said Verbeek. "Then we came out and rocked the house and won."
The band's success has prompted them to record their first full-length album, which will include 11 of their own songs."It's good, hard rockin', and pretty kickin'," said Rommel
"I got to play my guitar a lot so it was fun," said Verbeek.
The band will release their CD in October but in the meantime they can be seen at their next gig playing at the Squamish Summer Fest on Sept. 2 at the Squamish Pavilion. They will take the stage from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.
