A Textbook Tragedy tours like mad, playing every possible place along the way. The Vancouver metalcore band is even hitting the hardcore hotbed of Winkler, Man. after its Winnipeg stop.

That's just how it is if you want to make it big in the aggressive music scene.

"We're not in the easiest of genres to break in," vocalist/guitarist Kai Turmann, 21, says. "We accepted a long time ago that we'd never be a big radio smash. We just want to build a fanbase. No matter how small on the grand spectrum we are, we want to be able to play to hundreds of kids a night wherever we go."

Turmann, along with Nick Yacyshyn (drums), Bill Crook (bass) and Adam Christianson (guitar), formed ATT four years ago, while all were still in high school. In 2005, the band released A Partial Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest. Sensing the need to take the live show up a notch, ATT added vocalist Chris Bahris to its ranks and recorded Intimidator earlier this year, right here in Winnipeg.

"We did our album with John Paul Peters," Turmman says. "He did Comeback Kid, Figure Four, Means, Every New Day. We did it at Private Ear Recording."

The band received a standard Winnipeg welcome.

"We didn't know anything about what parts of town were sketchy because it all kind of seemed sketchy, but we parked our van for a couple hours at Portage and Young," Turmann says. "We got a window popped and they took a bunch of our bags, but luckily no gear was stolen."

While A Partial Dialogue... was full on mental metal, ATT chose to keep it simple with Intimidator.

"We decided as a group we wanted to be a lot groovier," Turmann says. "We want kids to still accept us as technical, but also they can get into it and bounce their heads a bit more."

ATT even took a more straightforward route when naming the album. A Partial Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but Intimidator, well, that title could hang out with Painkiller or Orgasmatron.

"That's what we were going for," Turmann says. "Our first album had an overly artistic title. We wanted to keep it simple. Let's make it like a Mötley Crüe or a Bon Jovi, just one catchy word."

Plus the title will look great on a T-shirt.

"We haven't made any Intimidator T-shirts yet, but we did make a shirt with a huge alligator on it and it says 'Intimigator.'"