Kill the Drama sounds nothing like Rusted Root and hasn't accomplished even a fraction of what Pittsburgh's biggest-selling band has done, but the two bands have at least one thing in common: They both formed, then jumped right into the Graffiti Rock Challenge.

	Kill the Drama finds drama in its songs. Click photo for larger image. Kill the Drama With: School of Athens, Triggers. Where: Diesel, South Side. When: 6 p.m. Saturday. Admission: $5 advance; $7 at the door; 412-431-8800.

The band's winning combination started with the placement of a classified ad in the fall of 2005. Three members of a Richland band called Pagewater had music written but were looking for a singer and lyricist, and struggling mightily.

"We had searched all sorts of avenues and tried out a whole bunch of people," says the bassist, who goes by the name of Skinny. "We got some enjoyable 'American Idol'-style auditions."

There was a female singer for a while, but that wasn't working out. One day, Bryan Laskey answered the ad. He was a voice major at CCAC and had played in a couple of bands called Break the Sun and Pinchpoint. He turned up with one of those voices that can soar high, like Geddy Lee or Claudio Sanchez of Coheed & Cambria, one of his favorite bands.

"I remember hearing him and thinking he would be perfect for us," Skinny says of Laskey. "The influences we had were guys who have high, pretty voices. It goes against the grain of the Pittsburgh rock sound, actually, where you have a lot of guys who sound like Creed, and we had no interest in that."

During the second or third practice, Skinny says, "We were just kind of jamming around, and he went really high. He told us it was the first time he'd ever sung falsetto. It kind of blew us away."

That's about when the band started to click. As they moved through the last winter's Rock Challenge, where Laskey sported a Roethlisberger jersey in a show of Steelers pride, they were asked what style of music they play and responded "grandiose arena rock."

"Yeah, I think we were more or less trying not to put ourselves into a category," Laskey says. "We came up with several names where we were making up our genre. We even used 'Euro-sex rock' at one point."

The arena-rock tag better applies to "Close Friends With Sharp Knives," a just-released CD that Kill the Drama cut as its Rock Challenge prize. The band's 12-song debut has a commercial alternative-rock sound that could fit alongside Evanescence on the radio while also appealing to Rush fans. Contrary to the name, Laskey loads the songs with high drama of romantic ups and downs.

"I guess in a world where it seems like every rock star is writing about how bad life is, what I try to do it bring up a negative and then try to resolve it. Almost like there's hope. That everything's not always so doom and gloom," Laskey says.

The band will release the CD with a show at Diesel on Saturday. As a live act, Kill the Drama is still trying to find its place in the scene. Rather than working the clubs, the band has been more focused the past year on getting the CD out.

"We haven't even been received that well," Skinny says. "We're sitting in a strange place in the Pittsburgh music scene. In one place, you have the bands that want to sound like Creed and on the other hand you have the indie-rock community, with places like the Brillobox. We don't really fit in there because we're trying to write songs that we would want to listen to and we would want to hear on the radio, and that doesn't fit in with the art community."

Skinny says the Brillobox told them "we didn't fit into their programming, which we found really amusing."

Kill the Drama has had more luck with venues like Mr. Small's and the Rex, but the band really hasn't had much time for gigging. They had songs to write and a CD to get out within a year of winning the Challenge.

"We said if we're going to sit in the studio and get everything done the right way," Skinny says, "we want to have a large collection of songs so that we have material if a label comes looking for us. It remains to be seen if that was the proper decision."