Friends since primary school, Josh Cougar, Callum Webb and Will Kelly discovered their passion for music after joining their high school's music program and realising they "sounded pretty decent together."
"Callum was getting guitar lessons, I was getting drum lessons and Will was getting singing lessons," Josh recalled.
"We were like, 'let's try and play something together', because we were really passionate about it and we like the same kind of music, so that's how we connected.
"People came to watch through the glass [at school] and were enjoying the show, so we thought we should turn it into an actual band."
That band became known as Aiffel, a name arising from an in-joke that started after Will had "an unfortunate voice crack" while singing the lyrics "… pulverise the Eiffel towers" from Green Day's hit Holiday.
The boys, now 17, have been meeting up for jam sessions two to three times every week for nearly four years.
"School work does get in the way," Will lamented.
"But we have a rule: schoolwork always comes first and this [music] is secondary."
The band started out performing covers but the boys soon had the urge to write their own music, crafting their first song Damage Control.
"We all came together and wrote our own parts for it, which was really awesome," Callum said.
"It's a super diverse song because of all the different inputs that went into it."
Now, with the addition of 13-year-old guitarist Cooper Minion, Aiffel has released its first original album — all recorded in Josh's parents' garage and mixed on their home computer.
"In the garage it's such a relaxed environment," Callum said.
"It's a really cool sound that we only really get from a garage."
'It's all about the people'
The boys say their music is inspired by "older rock bands" like Foo Fighters, Green Day, Cream and Pink Floyd, because they "love the energy in the older music" that they don't see in today's hits.
Their songs are a mix of grunge, alternative and heavy metal rock — a deliberate move, Josh says, to ensure the album has variety and "isn't just one sound".
"You'll listen to some albums and you'll be like, this song is catchy and really groovy," he said.
"And then you'll play another song and it's the same thing, same thing, same thing, and there's no diversity.
"But we really wanted to be diverse with our songs, we didn't want it to all just be repetitive … so we're trying to add different techniques and different styles so our music stands out."
When it comes to the lyrics, they turn to their lived experience as teenagers navigating school and relationships.
"We write a lot about problems that we experience as teenagers and that we think people could relate to," Josh said.
"For example, Eden is about finding happiness and that's a thing that I think all of us at some point have struggled to find so that was actually a message that we could connect with people."
Recently, with no school work to distract them over the summer holidays, the boys dedicated all their time to completing their first album.
"It's all about the people and the collaboration that it takes to make a song," Josh said.
"You've got to listen to what others' ideas are," added Cooper, who joined the band six months ago.
"The song writing, it's not just all about yourself, it's about the whole band, and if someone's not happy with a riff or a fill, you've got to change it, you've got to listen to everybody."
Family support 'to take it anywhere'
The young band members have been working part-time jobs to get enough money together to publish and launch the album and say they're lucky to have the full support of their families.
Josh's mum is known for cooking a "damn good lasagne" for the boys to eat during jam sessions, while his sister helps with social media promotions, and his father, John Cougar, helped them produce the album in their garage.
Mr Cougar himself started playing guitar as a teenager in the 70s and has been involved in local Canberra bands for more than 30 years.
"This is the first real release I've ever done, so I learnt so much along the way," he said.
"I'm trying to get an album done, I have done for 40 years. I'm one of those stories," he added with a laugh.
"They beat me to the punch."
Mr Cougar, who works as an engineer in the IT industry, said he was "super proud" of the boys, and he couldn't wait to see what they did in the future.
"When you've got a writing team like them, when every time they get together something comes out of it … they can take it anywhere," he said.
That anywhere, the boys hope, will be a career in the music industry and even a record deal, with plans to study music production after their secondary school journeys are complete.
For now, though, three of the boys are balancing their year 12 studies with writing their second album.
"I just love making music; it's like the best damn thing; it's just so much fun, especially with mates," Callum said.
"Listening to some of the first recordings we've done of our songs, they're awful.
"But it's a really cool time capsule seeing how far we've all come and how much we've gotten better."
