Proud to be Loud

This is the 10th time in the past two hours that lead guitarist Daniel Faulkner has picked up his cell phone to call drummer Craig Kirkpatrick.

"Dude, Craig, where are you?" he sighs. "We were supposed to start practice an hour ago!"

Path to Exile, a band of five teenagers, is setting up for a routine Saturday afternoon band practice. But so far, things don't seem to be going according to plan.

As Faulkner paces around the room impatiently, keyboardist and background vocalist Jason Holmes does a quick soundcheck on his instrument. "Can you guys hear my keyboard when I play?" he asks, haphazardly pressing on the keys.

At that moment, rhythm guitarist Kory Hulsey bursts out of the house, running down the street, calling over his shoulder, "I forgot my white guitar strap, I'll be back!"

Meanwhile, lead singer Troy Keys somehow manages to find an empty space in the brightly illuminated garage to jump around amidst the vast array of amps, electrical cords, electric guitars and the giant refrigerator in the corner.

Finally, Kirkpatrick straggles in from baseball practice.

After being heckled for a few minutes by his friends for being so late, Path to Exile commences jamming.

Just like magic, all the distractions that plagued the boys earlier have vanished. Despite their disjointed start, the band members are in their element.

The garage door rattles behind them as their viciousness and brutality blast out of the speakers in the form of Keys' seemingly incomprehensible voice; headbanging, thrashlike guitar riffs and a catchy drumbeat and steady keyboard hook it all together.

The garage door continues to shake as Keys, Hulsey and Faulkner lunge around and finally get a grasp of their inner heavy metal personas, increasing the volume and headbanging ratio.

The quintet is in perfect sync with each other, as if every move, every lyric, every riff and beat are tattooed perfectly in their minds.

Formed by vocalist Keys and drummer Kirkpatrick in July 2009, Path to Exile solidified their lineup after going through different members for months.

Their ages vary, with Keys, Faulkner and Kirkpatrick being the youngest at 13; Holmes is the oldest at 17.

Faulkner and Kirkpatrick are the main songwriters of the group, which takes their name from a song by the group Beyond the Day.

"I get my inspiration from songs on my iPod," Faulkner says. "I'll imitate a song I like, but I'll imitate it wrong and it turns into a riff that I really like."

The band's influences are grounded in extreme metal bands such as Cattle Decapitation, Burning the Masses and Slaughterbox. Kirkpatrick fondly describes Path to Exile's sound as that of "a bear mauling a puppy."

"Our sound is different," he says. "Everything sounds the same nowadays so we're the needle in the haystack."

The band debuted live on Jan. 1 at The Farm and is planning to release its first full-length album, "A Promise of Desolation," in May.

"We've written a lot of songs," says Faulkner. "But then we realized that they weren't as great as we thought they were, so we're making them better."

Despite the band's growing fan base, they're reminded every day that they're still teenagers.

"I couldn't play our last show at The Farm because I had a C in one of my classes," Holmes admits sheepishly.

The group also doesn't practice on Tuesday and Thursday because of Kirkpatrick's baseball practices.

However, the boys claim the best part about being in the band is not playing sold-out shows or getting signed to a major record label, it's the fact that they get to make music together.

"We've been best friends for a long time," says Hulsey. "It's really fun to do what you love with the people you love. The best part is that we get so loud sometimes that people complain that when they're driving through our neighborhood, they can hear us from a few blocks away."