From the pavement of the street on Willowbrook Avenue, the audio onslaught that wafts from within the practice space of Ames band Keep and Confess is clearly audible.

The music comes from the sunroom in drummer Patrick Schmidt’s parents’ house.

The sun is beating down from three small windows in the room toward the top of the vaulted ceiling.

The brightness of the room seems atypical considering Keep and Confess is a hardcore band with screaming vocals.

None of the five guys in the band seem to care, however. They are more than proud to carry the hardcore torch.

“I wanted to be in a band just because that’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” says Keep and Confess vocalist Alex Arthur.

“I got into the heavy metal stuff at first, but hardcore is fun to play because it really lets your emotions out easily and it’s fun to play ’cause you can freak out.”

Lead guitarist Alex Register says the band’s influences come from bands such as The Chariot, Norma Jean and Every Time I Die, but are not just limited to a certain type of hardcore.

“We try to draw from every type of hardcore that we can – a lot of grind-core bands and bands that kind of transcend it, like Haste the Day,” Register says. “We’re tough-guy hardcore.”

The Chariot and Norma Jean are Christian hardcore bands, but Register says Keep and Confess has chosen not to be a Christian band, and for good reason.

“I think if we really wanted to be a Christian band, we would do it,” he says.

“People are always gonna talk bad about you no matter what. It’s just a different thing that they can talk crap about.”

Arthur says the band has been around for several years starting in junior high, but didn’t consider itself an actual band until around two years ago.

“Me and Register and Travis have been playing for around three years, but we never really had a drummer,” he says.

Arthur says the band added drummer Patrick Schmidt after finding out he had received a drum set for Christmas.

Register says the band had been practicing under the name A Death Shadow, which he says is one of the slew of names its had.

“Our first band name was Trapped, and then that band Trapt came out, so we’re like ‘Well, we’re just gonna reverse that and so our band name’s gonna be Released,” Register says.

“And then, in eighth grade, we were just trying to find something that sounded really dark, so we were like ‘A Death Shadow sounds sweet!’ I’m glad that we didn’t stick with that, because that was pretty dumb.”

Register says he is the mastermind behind the name Keep and Confess, which he found in a passage from the Bible.

“I wasn’t that big on Christianity when I picked it out,” Register says.

“I just thought it would sound cool. Like I said, all of our band names before that were just terrible. They were band names that came from middle schoolers. We just thought this was a band name that didn’t sound like we were trying too hard to make it sound cool. It was just a good name, so everyone agreed on it.”

Register says a new sound came with the Keep and Confess moniker which was a good thing for the direction of the band.

“Our old style used to be a lot more like what’s popular now, like the whole post-hardcore mixed with pop like Hawthorne Heights and that crap,” Register says.

“As we’ve progressed to listening to harder stuff, then our style changed and also I think that whole style becoming popular helped, too, and I’m glad we don’t play that crap anymore.”