By Joe Pompeo

Three songs into Fucked Up’s April 19 performance at SUNY Purchase, the Toronto hardcore quintet’s bearish singer, Damian Abraham, had breached the wooden barricades that separated the band from its rambunctious audience. The sound was promptly turned off, and Fucked Up’s members had no choice but to put down their instruments—while a chorus of  “BULLSHIT!” chants emanated from disappointed fans—and walk offstage. They were greeted by a bevy of police officers who advised them that if they didn’t leave the campus immediately, they’d be arrested for inciting a riot.

“We were back on the highway by the same time we were supposed to be finishing our set,” says guitarist Mike Haliechuk, though he managed to see the brighter side of things, adding with a laugh. “When stuff like that happens, not only do you get cool press, but there’s less work you have to do. So the crazier, the better.”

It’s true. Since Fucked Up formed roughly seven years ago, unfortunate situations like this one have only helped build an allure. When they were denied entry into the States en route to a highly anticipated CMJ showcase in November 2006, it created even more exposure upon their return to New York a few months later to play a sold-out show at the Mercury Lounge. (It’s not often you see people trying to scalp tickets outside a $10 punk rock gig.) The following November, they made the front page of The New York Times arts section, the unfortunate part being that the paper would identify them only as a group whose “name won’t be printed in these pages, not unless an American president, or someone similar, says it by mistake.” And a month later, they joined 185 artists in a class-action lawsuit against Camel and Rolling Stone over the unauthorized use of their band name in an “Indie Rock Universe” feature that the magazine had packaged within a foldout cigarette advertisement; naturally, favorable Internet buzz ensued. (The suit is still pending.)

Of course Fucked Up has also contributed to its own mystique, from band members’ strange monikers (Haliechuk’s is 10,000 Marbles, Abraham’s is Pink Eyes, there’s bassist and sole female member Mustard Gas, guitarist Concentration Camp and drummer Mr. Jo), to their unruly stage antics (Abraham often makes his forehead bleed during shows). Then factor in mystical lyrics and presumably apocryphal claims of members who suffer from schizophrenia—or who secretly hate one another. Not to mention the Christmas single they released last December featuring a mish-mash of notable collaborators: the most unlikely and bizarre of which was top-40 songstress Nelly Furtado.

But what separates Fucked Up from other buzz bands is that they actually live up to the hype. Fucked Up has an anthemic, classic hardcore sound, coupled with outstanding musicianship and innovative songwriting: Some tracks are poppy, some are dark and others are more than 10 minutes long and accompanied by piano or violins. They’ve re-energized a generation of former punk rockers inching reluctantly into their thirties, perhaps reminding them, as evidenced by the band’s New York shows, that you’re never too old to enter a mosh pit. Now, the band continues to branch out of the DIY scene that spawned it, getting ready to record what Haliechuk said will be a “shorter, more compressed, more nuanced” follow-up to Fucked Up’s epic, 2006 debut full-length CD, Hidden World.

But will the enigma carry on?

“A few years after we started the band as a joke, we sort of found ourselves with this ridiculous reputation, and a lot of what we’re doing now is trying to tear that apart,” Haliechuk says. “Because we’re really not these mystical, brooding people. We’re just these five dicks.”

May 9, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B’way & Church St.), 212-219-3132; 6, $10.