Whakatāne’s Why The Face are taking on the country’s top teen musicians in the national round of the Smokefreerockquest after achieving third place at the regional finals in Tauranga.

At the regionals last month, the five-piece band from Whakatane High School High School performed two new songs to a more engaged crowd.

The band is made up of year 11 and 12 students, along with year 10 student Matthew Clark, who stepped up to fill the bassist role for the competition.

Vocalist Phoebe Askew said this round held at Totara Street was a better venue for the band, especially since they had played there before.

Their first song Fortune Teller, with lyrics by Phoebe, was played for the first time before an audience.

“It has a bit of a weird meaning. I wrote it from the perspective of inside someone else’s head – just a person I’ve made up,” she said.

The track is very inspired by Deftones and Incubus.

As for the performance, despite a self-reported shaky intro, the band quickly tightened up.

Drummer Harper Sheedy said he “played very well” during Fortune Teller.

“I love that song,” he said.

Guitarist Luke Sims said he felt as if he messed up his solo but was able to recover quickly into an improvised replacement. The rest of the band confirmed this switch was smooth and not noticeable.

Luke said their next song, Brand of Sacrifice, was heavier, more of an alternate rock and metal track.

He pieced this song together after writing the music for other songs.

“I wrote a bunch of different songs in the same key, took the parts I liked and smashed them together,” he said.

Phoebe wrote the lyrics, which are about how an ended relationship can affect you long after you have had closure.

“It can be this lifelong thing you carry,” she said.

Luke said the title came from a concept in the manga series Beserk.

“It’s from a book. If you are marked with the “brand of sacrifice” your life is a sacrifice, your life is doomed,” he said.

Phoebe said the band enjoyed taking these concepts and making them more relatable to an audience.

For the final, the band have submitted a video of their three songs, the two they performed at the finals plus Within, the song that qualified them for the finals.

Guitarist Noah Vullings said Why The Face celebrated the most of all the winners at RockQuest.

“We were third place, and we had the best reaction. First and second clapped for a bit, but we were like throwing [Harper] in the sky,” he said.

Phoebe said typically third place did not qualify for nationals, but the RockQuest event manager loved the band so much he invited them to submit a video anyway.

Demos of Why The Face’s songs can be found on their Soundcloud, but Noah warns these were recorded on phone microphones.

The group are working towards writing enough songs to record an album professionally and have a lot of merch ideas in the works.

Luke said he was working on a new song in a heavier style, using a seven-string guitar.

“I think it’s going to be really good,” he said.

Why The Face will be performing at the Light Up Whakatāne opening tomorrow night and at Brews, Bites & Beats at Trident High School on July 19.