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The Old Ultra Violence
By Megan Carneal
mcarneal@mscd.edu

Viddy well little brother. The Lower Class Brats are, from left: Bones Delarge, Clay, Marty Colume and Evo.

Austin, Texas calls itself “The Live Music Capital of the World.” Home to the mega-indie festival South by Southwest since 1987, the city was influential in the rise of the indie and post-hardcore scenes. To an outsider, it would seem like a great place to live. But for a group of punks, Austin was the perfect place to begin their war against the indie-music scene.

The Lower Class Brats got their start in Austin in 1995 out of the desire to bring back true punk into a scene that was, at the time, dying. During the mid-90s the street-punk scene had experienced a serious decline, due in part to the mainstreaming of pop-punk bands and the explosion of post-punk and indie.

The Brats have put out four LPs on various labels, including TKO records and Punkcore. They have also been featured on numerous compilations and can even say they have added to the soundtrack of several adult films. Their latest album, The New Seditionaries, is scheduled for release on Sept. 5 and they are currently on tour with fellow street-punk bands Resilience and SS-Kaliert.

The Brats brought street, oi and clockwork punk back with fast, heavy riffs and vocals filled with anger and defiance. To keep things from getting too serious they intertwine tracks about oppresion, poverty and the streets with tracks dedicated to the classic Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange.