KEY POINTS:
Their album's called Fight Music but don't bother taking them on. Take the Willing frontman Nathan Sowter trains in ju-jitsu.
"So I keep it in the dojo," he says from his home in Mt Maunganui.
"If anything I've learned how tough I'm not. We're grown up now. But Tauranga is pretty notorious for its street-fighting culture."
The band are more likely to take their aggression out through their music, a scorching blast of hardcore marked by duelling guitars, Sowter's throat-lashed vocal and sonic, singalong choruses.
Among their most popular songs are I'll Kill Everyone At This Party and At This Moment In Time, I'm Popular With A Lot of People Who Are Drunk.
"I think metal's predominantly seen as being a bunch of guys complaining about life and asking, 'Why me?'
"But we don't have that take on it. We try to be energetic and enthusiastic about life and as a result our music's fairly high-powered and high-paced."
It's not just drunks who like them. Sowter and his bandmates Kurt Andersen (guitar), Jayden Faass (drums), Kaya Rayner (guitar) and Jarred Dykes (bass), have been together for just over a year but they've made every opportunity count, heading out on the road four times, including a support act for Blindspott's farewell tour, and gigs with the Bleeders and Full Nelson, plus a spot at Killerfest alongside Hatebreed, Parkway Drive and The Valley.
Their personal relationships have also helped with the album. When Sowter worked as a sound engineer on Blindspott's album, End the Silence, he got to know their Swedish producers, Pelle Henricsson and Eskil Lovstrom, who also worked with two of Take the Willing's favourite bands, Refused and Poison the Well.
The Swedes liked the band's demo and agreed to mix their album so Sowter spent two weeks on the other side of the globe with his heroes.
"It makes me laugh to think that growing up in the Mount surfing, every night at our parties we were playing that stuff. We grew up on bands like Refused. Before I even knew anything about the music industry, we were cranking that album.
"It was a bit of a jaw-dropper for everyone that we ended up working with their producer."
When he returned, Angelo Munro from the Bleeders signed the band to his new label, Deadboy Records.
"It was a case of him taking a chance on us. We're not a band that a lot of people have heard of. We've done this back-to-front.
"We've been given some good breaks, made good relationships and we've come back and Ange has been willing to get our back."
There's more fighting talk on the record. Sowter says he writes statements rather than stories.
"They're designed to make you pick a side instead of sitting on the fence like a lot of us do in life.
"Either you have to agree with them or not, to make decisions and back yourself, go for it."
He had to take his own medicine when he wrote Steeped in Ambition, which includes the line: "Gangsters, faggots, sex is just money and scandal."
"To say the word 'faggots' on a recording, I was really second guessing myself. Because obviously people are straight away going to go 'Oh, this guy's anti-gay' when that's not what it's about."
Picking a side when it comes to defining their sound is just as tricky.
Take the Willing look up to hard-working local acts like Antagonist, In Dread Response and Second Theory.
"Because we grew up with that level of enthusiasm, our sound is from our childhood, bands like Nosebleed and Don't.
"It was a natural progression for us to go into this heavy music."
Performance
* Who: Take the Willing
* Where and when: Oblivion Bar, 68 Hobson St, Auckland, tonight
