Aggrolites.

I WAS ALWAYS taught that "aggro" meant something really good, something really tough. Mike Tyson was aggro. As a teenager he went undefeated with 14 first-round knockouts. Bruce Willis was aggro; in the first Die hard he ran barefoot across broken glass in order to save his company Christmas party from an albino terrorist. In skateboarding there are too many examples of aggro to pick just one. The point is we all basically agree that aggro essentially means aggressive. So a band called the Aggrolites by definition must be aggressive lite, right? That makes sense. Reggae is a mellow, hollow drum sound with calming lyrics? Wrong. Aggrolites (Hellcat/Epitaph) play dirty reggae: full-throw, knee-drop reggae that makes you belt out and want to break things. That doesn't really fit with what you thought of as reggae, does it? For the Aggrolites, that's exactly their point-a point that comes across loud and clear. Each of these guys has some serious music pedigree, tacked to their history(Hepcat, the Rhythm Doctors,etc), so it's no surprise theAggrolites sound both hard and polished. An Aggrolitesshow is a dirty reggae callto arms, and a discussionwith them can teach you someimportant facts about music history. Set aside yourpreconceived ideas about what reggae is and was,and find out that reggae done dirty isn't mellow at all.

WHAT IS DIRTY REGGAE, and is that a term you guys coined?

Jesse Wagner (vocals, lead guitar): No. I'll be completely honest with you, we all came into this from different backgrounds. Some of us were playing punk rock, some of us were playing ska, and some were playing reggae. But what we came together to do and what we're still doing now, sounds specifically like 1969-1972 era reggae music. That's dirty reggae. A lot of the United States doesn't know that sound because they haven't ever been exposed to it. The Aggrolites keep getting called ska or ska punk in write-ups. Maybe that's because we're on Hellcat, and Hellcat is traditionally known as a punk rock label. But we're not playing punk or ska. We're playing dirty reggae, which is a very specific sound from a very specific time.

Your album shows everyone dressed in black, Jesse's carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder, and everyone looks mean. It doesn't fit with the stereotypical perception of reggae as dreads and bongo drums. Is being tough part of the dirty reggae message? Or is that because you guys are from Los Angeles?

J Bonner (bass): There are a lot of bands out there now trying to do the old-school reggae thing but it comes out sounding light and happy and skippy and weak. That's not how it was back in the day. In reality, poor, angry damaicans did dirty reggae, and it had a serious message to it. That's what Aggrolites are trying to bring back.

Scott Abels (drums): I'll say this, you go see most reggae acts and the music is fine, everyone's chill, and you have a good time, but basically it's boring as fuck to watch. Aggrolites has some serious stage presence. This band makes reggae exciting. I think of it as James Brown meets the Clash. I'm saying this now as a fan because I used to go see these guys play even before I joined the band, so I feel like I can rightfully say that.

Who came up with the name the Aggrolites, and why that name?

Brian Dixon (guitar): "Aggro" is a slang term from the 1960s. It stands for "aggravating," and it's synonymous with the reggae that was being done in that era. Some of the record labels used to use it as a marketing push because of the youth movements happening at the time. They would say "this band is aggro, that band is aggro," and the kids knew what it meant. There was even a house band called the Aggravators. The "lites" part is a soul-band thing. Putting lites in there lets the die-hard reggae heads know who we are and what we're about. We're dirty reggae.

Got it. Anything else?

All: Yes, many thanks to all the ladies in the world.