Mr. Small’s hosts “now-core” band

Amaranthine

With Outclassed

Sunday, 7 p.m.

Mr. Small’s

$8 in advance, $10 day of show… Amaranthine

With Outclassed

Sunday, 7 p.m.

Mr. Small’s

$8 in advance, $10 day of show

1-800-594-TIXX

While many Pitt freshmen spend every weekend wandering Atwood and Dithridge looking for some fun, Brian Thoma finds it an hour north of Pittsburgh in nearby Grove City. And it’s not for the Slippery Rock parties, either. Instead, Thoma returns to his hometown nearly every weekend to play with his band, Outclassed. And this Sunday at 7 p.m., the band will make its Mr. Small’s debut.

After forming in 2002 as a garage band of high school sophomores, the men of Outclassed – Thoma, a freshman English major at Pitt, as well as Garett Cassidy, Ben Johnson and Justin Bryan, all from Slippery Rock University – soon graduated to a new practice space: an empty room above the Thoma’s family-owned auto auction. It was there that the quartet focused their post-everything, genre-defying style.

“In the beginning, we just played out of sheer boredom. We started out as a punk band – they played three chords and I just drummed really fast,” Thoma said in a Towers Lobby interview.

The sound of Outclassed, coined by fan Lizzie Harris as “now-core,” is a blend of styles ranging from the post-hardcore of At the Drive-In to the funk-rock of early Red Hot Chili Peppers, with the energy of punk explosionists Refused and the technical skill of Every Time I Die. If that didn’t quite make sense, try this – there’s singing, there’s screaming, there’s bombastic percussion, there are driving, aggressive guitars, there are tambourines and there’s even the occasional well-placed handclap.

The lyrics are possibly the most refreshing aspect of the music from these high school best friends. Staying away from the usual “girl meets boy, girl crushes boy’s heart” subject matter of much of today’s independent music, Outclassed writes with a more historical perspective.

“(Lyricist Cassidy) has an odd fascination with Marxism. He’s always reading the Communist Manifesto. And he loves history. So we’ll write songs about, like, the French Revolution and tie in lots of those ideas,” Thoma explained. “We try to be ambiguous so people can interpret however they want.”

Although solely comprised of college freshmen, the band already has a cache of tour stories.

“We played in some band’s bassist’s basement in Callensburg – the town was like four houses and a post office. It was over a hundred degrees down there, and the basement was the size of a few tables. We had to open the basement doors and people just stood outside and watched,” Thoma said. (The actual population of Callensburg, Pa., was 214 in 2004, and it’s slowly decreasing)

But Mr. Small’s isn’t a basement, and Outclassed is ready. In fact, at this moment, Thoma is back with the boys in Grove City practicing for Sunday’s show, headlined by thrash metal band Amaranthine. While the show will certainly make new fans for Outclassed, friends of the band will see a whole new side of the musicians – especially of soft-spoken Thoma.

“We’re all really mild-mannered guys, but once you put us onstage, we’re completely different people. Playing is an outlet for us,” he said, chuckling as he continued, “We’re not in this for any groupies or the few dollars they’re paying us.”

Thoma was silent for a moment, then grinned and said, “And hey, you could probably get back in time for ‘Family Guy.'”