They had the last set at Bud Boys, a sports bar cum underground grotto that has since become a second home to dissident aggressors and lovers of heavy music. After newbies Downfall and Bad Burn, one of the country's toughest hardcore bands, butchered the small clusters of fans and devout beer drinkers with a severe pounding of detuned power chords and vicious drum attacks, Sky Church, a triumvirate of brothers, led the final sortie - to pulverize carcasses and squeeze the last breath out of bloodied ears and pulsating temples.

Although all three take turns barking their vicious angst-filled litany, it is hard to ignore their stocky bassist Russell dela Cruz, clad in baggy shorts and a checkered shirt, wearing thick black rimmed glasses. His fingers seem to take on a life of their own as they dance maniacally above the pickups and cavort across the fretboard; simultaneously, his mouth twists and contorts emitting hellish roars that seems to contradict the self-effacing revenge-of-the-nerds look he apparently favors.

Robert, a 19-year-old Med Tech student, who doubles as the drummer for Bad Burn, is on his fourth set for the evening, after hammering out two forearm bursting sets at Mayric's. "His brothers say his tongue starts to hang out of his mouth when he's tired," Ene, the band's enigmatic booking manager, tells me confidentially over a cold Budweiser. He must have drank his Gatorade, I think to myself, as Robert pummels his kit at a relentless 200 kilometers per hour without a hint of fatigue.

Almost four years since the band released Urge of the Human Device under Star Records (November 1996), the trio finally has followed up with a long overdue second album Unaware, Unwarned under the same label (May 19, 2000). Apparently, this delay was not the result of the band's own procrastination. "We were made to believe Urge did really poorly in terms of unit sales," says Russell. "The guy in charge at Star Records didn't like us too much," Follows up Rommel. "He's gone now, and maybe that's why we've finally been able to come out with our second album - I think he hoped we would go pop." Obviously, that never happened.

Apparently, Urge of the Human Device didn't do too badly at all. "We found out later that the album actually sold out," says Russell, "it was just that this guy who was on top of things had other things on his agenda, and promoting an aggressive band like Sky Church was not a priority. So he made it look like nobody wanted to listen to our stuff."

"We still don't expect too much from Star Records in terms of support," adds Robert.

The dela Cruz brothers, barely pubescent, established "the Church" in December 1990. Initially, they had dubbed their band "Electric Sky Church," which was the original title Jimi Hendrix had intended to use for the 1968 release under Reprise records "Electric Lady Land", according to the dela Cruz Brothers. Jimi Hendrix! I say to myself. Damn, at least these strapping lads know their rock and roll history. I ask Rommel, the band's guitarist, what he was into when he was 15 or 16, since these are generally our most impressionable years as music enthusiasts. "I was into new wave," he says, "The Cure, The Dawn, that kind of stuff. We also got into Guns and Roses and the glam rock thing as well as Red Hot Chili Peppers and of course thrash metal, Metallica and stuff."

The band dropped 'Electric' after finding out a New York-based techno act was gigging under the same name sometime in 1996. But "the three brothers have basically been playing with each other since Robert (the youngest of the three) was born," says Ene.

"We've been living our father's dream in a way," says Rommel. "He's a doctor, but he has always wanted to be a professional musician, it's always been a source of frustration for him. But because of this, we've always had his full support. He's the band's manager and he comes to most of our shows. He encourages us. Even our grandfather was a musician, a violinist."

Putting down your own songs and having them released on cassette and CD by a major label is an important milestone for any aspiring professional musician. Doing it a second time around represents a kind of coming of age. For band's like Metallica and Megadeath, "the second album" represented the turning points in their professional careers as drunken-thrashers playing small dingy beer stained clubs to thrasher-drunks playing concert halls and stadiums. But then the United States has the economies of scale to turn beer guzzling guitar demons into super stars; Sky Church still plays for "shameful measly amounts" according to Ene, which works out to a few hundred pesos for each member or, in other words, taxi and tapsi money.

"For us music is an outlet," says Russell, who is completing a degree in Industrial Engineering. "I study engineering stuff all day, and playing our music is just what I need." Rommel, 22, is in his third year of an undergraduate medicine program. When asked about pursuing music as a sole career, the three look blankly at each other. "It's an outlet for us," Russell repeats. "It's probably not possible for us to make this our carrer. Rock is just not big in the Philippines." And the audience for a Sky Church sound - angry, unrelenting, fuming mad - might even be more scarce in a country smothered by the bubble gum wrapping of the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears as well as an OPM machine that consistently regurgitates elevator classics.

Sky Church. Unaware, Unwarned. Released May 19. Fourteen tracks of fury. Can the Philippines feel the roar in the ground beneath her feet?