Formed in February 2007, self-described indie-core quartet Ace Merrill is one of those bands that harnesses hardcore intensity without giving in to its temptation for severity. This is indie rock without the staring at the sneakers. All of the members in this Rochester band are in their early 20s, and Joe Harris (guitar), Emery Rizzo (drums), Joshua Dettman (vocals), and Phil Kreuger (bass) are waking up to the realities of being a working band. The group pounded out a demo and a full-length CD ("When The Strangeness Strikes," which got some ink in AP Magazine last year).

Ace Merrill has played at shows where no one showed up. Now the band is vying for a shot to play for everyone through a contest for a Warped Tour slot. City sat down with the band recently. Below is an edited transcript of what went down.

CITY: How was Ace Merill put together?

Joe Harris: We sort of learned to play our instruments together. Josh is my cousin and he was always singing. He didn't need to learn anything.

Were you writing right away, or playing other bands' stuff?

Harris: As I learned I always wrote songs, as opposed to learning covers, which most kids do when they learn an instrument.

It's also handy for listeners to get a bead on where you're coming from.

Harris: I would learn other bands' songs, but when it came to performing together...I just used it as a tool to learn how to play the instrument. When we got together to play we were never interested in covers, we wanted to write our own stuff.

Emery Rizzo: We always played without rules. We'd just jam together.

Describe your sound.

Harris: At first it was a lot darker than it is now. It was sort of Norma Jean; heavier, almost industrial sounding.

That's nothing like you sound now. Besides you really don't strike me as particularly dark. Urgent, but not dark.

Harris: Yeah, but creatively we find that outlet interesting

Rizzo: I guess we're very down to earth, but our music shows a different side to us. Like, we work normal jobs, I'm going to school for political science... We're very normal daytime people, we're very polite to everybody. But then we get on stage...it's almost like this aggressive, dark aspect to us. It's very strange.

Perhaps you'd be angrier without this outlet?

Harris: It could be. I mean, even nice guys need a release for it all. It's really cathartic.

What's the new Ace Merrill music like? You seem eager to get it out.

Harris: The songs on our demo were more generic hardcore. And we had these songs that were more indicative of our sound, so we wanted to get back in the studio.

How do you write?

Harris: The music always comes first. It almost always starts on the guitar, except it's very loose. And I'll bring it to Emery and we form a song with it.

Rizzo: I try to bring structure to it, because I know Joe sometimes, when he writes - I'm not saying it's too obscure, but sometimes it won't be in a nutshell, and I try to bring it together with the drums.

Harris: Nobody knows Emery's drumming better than me. I base what I'm going to do on what he's going to do. And sometimes I'll write something knowing that it'll give him a hard time, to see what he does with it. On our new album there are a couple of songs with some pretty heavy stuff, like weird time signatures, and I just wanted to see how he would handle it, because I knew it would be cool.

For a guitar-driven band you don't pull off a lot of guitar leads. Why?

Harris: I feel I can't write a solo people haven't heard a million times already. There's a time to jam and there's a time to write a song, I feel.

When do the lyrics get plugged in?

Joshua Dettman: I just wait for them to be done. Usually they record it for me because I can't just sit there while they're playing in the practice room and come up with stuff and write it down. I have to sit with it by myself.

Harris: We base it on the sound and how we feel based on the instrumental stuff. Often a theme will pop up. We're really into movies. Our band name is Kiefer Sutherland's character in "Stand By Me." We're very visual, so we listen to the music and try to come up with imagery - a visual scenario - and describe it lyrically.

Is Ace Merrill a live band or a studio band?

Rizzo: I'm a studio guy. I love the creative aspect of it. I love playing live, but in order to have it right live, it all starts internally before you can branch out. Live is unpredictable, but that can be fun too.

What's a career highlight so far?

Harris: The spot in AP Magazine.

Lowlight?

Harris: The Bright Eyes show at the Armory. I was just trying anything to get us in front of a big group of people. We couldn't open for them, so we played afterward in the lobby. Basically everybody poured out and passed us not even stopping to listen. By the end we were playing to my sister and my cousin.

Ace Merrill

Water Street Music Hall, 204 N Water St.

Thursday, June 18

7 p.m. | $5| 325-5600