“Hey, you got any beer in that bag?” vocalist/guitarist Lenny Lashley asks a scruffy gent as we exit the local punk rock hot spot, The Cambridgeport Saloon. The haggard man shakes his head and picks up his sluggish pace, Lashley continues: “C’mon, I know you’ve got beer in there.”

As we split away from the pack on the Central Square sidewalk, guitarist Paul Delano hears the man call Lashley a “prick.”

Ironically, the name suits him well.

When asked earlier in the day if it paid to be a prick, he replied, “It just comes natural. I’m fucking 35; I can’t fight it know.”

Welcome to the world of Darkbuster - beer-fueled mayhem with an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek attitude. Any band can go out on stage and incite a riot with their sense of humor, but when you can back it up with musical prowess, you know you have something good.

Starting off in 1997, the band centered itself in the Boston punk scene and wrote about the things they knew best - beer, broken relationships and more beer. The songs may have been juvenile - hell, they still are - but they were certainly good enough to garner a decent following and put together one of the most complete records in years, the self-released 23 Songs You’ll Never Want To Hear Again.

In addition to boasting an unhealthy obsession with Budweiser, 23 Songs went on to poke fun at a slew of different targets - the Lillith Fair, the lead vocalist of Providence, R.I.’s Amazing Crowns, Jason Kendall (“Amazing Royal Shaft”) and political punks from Boston’s south shore, The Unseen. The later feel the brunt of Darkbuster’s wrath in the humorous ditty “I Hate The Unseen,” a track which has become a crowd favorite.

As to the possible bad blood between Darkbuster and the Boston punk scene, Lashley likes to think that it is over and done with. “Jason [Kendall] has come out in The Boston Globe and said he wanted to do a split 7-inch with us,” he states. “Our appropriate response is that we’d like to split his head. It’s all in good fun.” Bass player Mike Gurley says with a laugh, “Anybody who listens to our CD and takes offense has got to be fucking dumb.”

In May 2000, Darkbuster took part in one of the nation’s largest battle of the bands contests - the WBCN Rumble. Surprisingly, with an added bit of controversy, they took home the title, the prize money and the dreaded “curse” stigma that surrounds the annual winner. Sources at the show stated that the reason Darkbuster won the Rumble was that the judges feared that a loss, especially to the pop act Waltham, would spark of a riot. The band is not sure if that claim holds any validity. “I’d like to think that our fans would have rioted if Waltham won,” Lashley recalls. “I would have been throwing some punches around.”

Another incident that caused tempers to briefly flare was an altercation between Darkbuster and Veruca Salt, the Rumble’s special guest. According to Lashley, one of the girls from Veruca Salt approached their merch guy and insinuated that Darkbuster had stolen some of the band’s equipment. “That was the rumor,” he said with a sarcastic grin. “She said that we weren’t welcome in Chicago.”

“She owns Chicago,” chimed in Delano.

“I guess that makes Chicago a tough town,” Lashley sneered, easily getting his point across.

Another perk of wining the WBCN Rumble was an opening slot on the station’s giant, all-day music festival, The River Rave, at Foxboro Stadium.

Being one of the few punk bands on a lineup jammed to the rafters with rap-metal lemmings allowed Darkbuster to use their charm to their full advantage. They probably didn’t make too many business contacts.

“The River Rave was awesome,” laughed Lashley. “Static X were awesome. What a bunch of great fuckin’ guys.” He wasn’t the only one who came to the event with a chip on his shoulder. “It was great to make fun of Godsmack in front of 10,000 of their fans,” Delano said with a smile.

The attitude didn’t end on the stage. Darkbuster brought 90 beers with them to the event and when those were quickly dispatched by these hard drinkers and their crew, they tried to lay siege to the hospitality tent back stage.

Riffling through the free beer reserved for the performers and their guests, Darkbuster quickly dried up the place. Lashley tried to persuade WBCN’s program director, Oedipus, to fetch him some more. “I was more or less treating him like my manservant,” he said. “I was like ‘Hey Oedipus, there’s no beer in there.’ You’re shut off, he says. I just laughed.”

Darkbuster plans on heading into the studio in the near future to record some new material. “We’re going to venture out and incorporate more beers into our songs,” Lashley said in between drags on his cigarette. “The Lowenbrau jingle is going to be my next song. I’m working on that right now.”

If this band doesn’t make it big it will be due to one thing - a lack of touring. They have the songs, the attitude and the drunken behavior. But they need to take their punk rock circus outside of the Cambridgeport Saloon. Although they have toured outside of the New England area, Darkbuster needs to step it up. They could wait around and hope that a larger band will offer them a slot on a U.S. tour, or they could bust their asses and give it a go by themselves. For the sake of their music, let’s hope they can pull off both.