Rochester's Rainline is a heavy modern-rock band rooted in big guitars and soaring vocal lines. The music thunders along powerfully with catchy, clever hooks and boundless energy. Rainline isn't necessarily breaking new ground - modern rock as a genre has been around close to 20 years now, and the style is still crowded with talent - but the band doesn't claim to be. That said, Rainline holds its own amongst the best of the field. Unlike a lot of bands that claim their sound arrived via ouija board, Rainline actually set out to sound this way. It didn't just happen.

Vocalist/guitarist Ken Kral, bassist Todd Samolis, guitarists Lee Heberger and Scott Law, and drummer Jeff Knope all have plenty of musical experience (previous groups include Big Lizard, Rebellion, Twilight's End, New Religion, Spine Dance, Stronghold, and Alter Ego, to name a few), so the band had the tools for the task. But the members weren't just looking to jam and hope for the best. They had already gone that route.

Samolis and Knope had already been playing together when Heberger answered their ad for musicians. He brought Kral along. Law completed the line-up in 2006. The plan of attack began.

"There was a meeting around the table in the back yard, talking about what direction we wanted to go in," Hebeger says. "I just didn't want to be in a cover band." But within rock music's broad and vague parameters, what a band wants to be and what a band actually is can be two different things.

So there was a tug of war between the band's nature and nurture, with both sides coming out about even, according to Knope. "It's probably 50/50" original music to cover music, he says. "Because we said we wanted to be an original band." What kind remained to be seen.

"I think in the beginning there was a lot of effort, because we didn't know who we were yet. We hadn't heard ourselves yet," Knope says. At least they knew they were a rock band; it wasn't a stretch, really. Well, maybe a little bit for Kral.

"I was gonna be the biggest stretch, because I had always been the cover-band guy," he says. It was a transition for him, since he had never written his own stuff. Now he had to come up with his own melody lines - melody lines that give Rainline its shine and its own spotlight.

Music fans will forever lock a band or style into the confines of the decade when it first became popular, be it the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, or in the case of Rainline's modern-rock sound, the 90's. It's not an entirely inaccurate - albeit somewhat lazy - classification, but one that is challenged somewhat by Rainline's contemporary musical and lyrical relevance.

That brings us back to Kral. The man's voice is tremendous. It has depth, it has sweep, and it sounds as if it comes with its own reverb. It's as slick and clean as Kral's bald head. He owns every note in his elastic range without all the vein-busting drama. The band's compositions make the most of it, and the instrumental power propels it all forward.

Rainline is a band that completely works. But even though the elements and experience were there from the beginning, there was no guarantee it was going to succeed.

"It wasn't until after we recorded it, kicked bank, and listened to it," Samolis says. It was then that the group realized that, "‘Holy shit, this is really good.' And it really doesn't sound like anything else, and we like it,"' Samolis says.

"The cool thing," says Knope, "is some of us have been doing this for 20 years plus. Everything we're doing now, the experience and growth, we're enjoying everything we've learned.

Rainline continues to write, rehearse, and expand its fan base. Two albums are done and No. 3 looms on the horizon. The band's song "Am I Alive" is featured on the soundtrack for the independent film "Zombie Allegiance." It's been a long ascent to the throne.

When asked if Rainline could have existed 10 years ago, and sounded as it does today, the band gives a resounding "no" in unison.

"Now we can afford the good equipment," Samolis say.

Rainline

w/Thunder Snow

Montage Live Music Hall, 50 Chestnut St.

Friday, February 12

8 p.m. | $5-$7 | myspace.com/rainline11