LOWER CLASS BRATS

Like a festering sore or a criminal rap sheet, the Lower Class Brats won't go away. Formed in Austin, Texas in 1995, the Brats hit the scene like a gob of Lone Star loogie and have been spitting like cobras ever since. Brazenly unapologetic and frightfully in-your-face, the band's knuckle-busting brand of safety-pinned street punk has launched a legacy of hostility. After scraping and stealing (or worse) to release a handful of broke-budget, seven-inch singles, the Brats finally issued their rabidly devoured 1997 debut album, "Rather Be Hated Than Ignored." A promise as much as a threat, "Hated" became a rallying cry for Austin's underground punk scene and served as marching orders for the germinating LCB Army. It also became an Oi! classic. Sixteen years and multiple albums later (to say nothing of the untold beers, drugs, fights and vomit) the Brats and their tattooed Army remain a growing worldwide disease. Tours across Mexico, Europe, North America, Canada, Japan and elsewhere left a wake of wreckage and won countless new LCB recruits who proudly wear the band's clockwork skull mascot on tattered jackets and deep in their skin. Today, to the great dismay of polite society, the Brats refuse to slow down or sober up. With new music always ticking like a bomb, the next explosion of chaos, riot and ruin is right around the next piss-stained corner. Consider yourself warned … and invited!