Madball – Not Your Kingdom
Few bands have remained credible at street level for almost forty years, and Madball is one of them. Formed in the late eighties in New York as a side project around Agnostic Front, the band grew under the leadership of frontman Freddy Cricien into one of the definitive voices of the New York hardcore scene. After eight years of silence, and with the departure of longtime bassist Jorge Hoya Roc Guerra as an additional complication, “Not Your Kingdom”, the band’s tenth studio album, has now arrived. It is no small matter, because when you have Madball make a new record, you set the bar high, and for this band that bar still stands at raw, cold intensity.
And that is immediately the first impression that opener “Tethered” delivers. Cricien screams his presence into the world as if no time has passed, and the riffs come rolling forward with malicious intent. There is something ruthless about the way this track opens the album, no warm-up, straight to the knockout blow. “Flammable” proves that the band can deliver a thrash track just as easily as a classic beatdown when the occasion calls for it, and shows that fourteen tracks in thirty minutes are not an empty promise but a statement. Little waste, plenty of venom.
Yet this is not simply more of the same. “Rebel Kids”, the first single and the track with which the entire album once began, is more anthemic and accessible than you are used to from this band, with gang vocals that sound somewhat lighter than the rough nineties on which older fans thrive. That makes the track less confrontational, but immediately recognisable as Madball. “Life’s a Mural” and the related title “What You Say” add something lyrically about power, control and the unequal relationships of today’s world, without ever feeling preachy. Closing track “Chase a Dream” rounds off the whole as it should, with the same unassailable urgency with which it began.
What stands out is that Madball seems to be moving between two generations of fans here. Longtime followers get the nostalgia of familiar riffs and that characteristic Cricien growl, while newcomers are given an entry point that is just a little less rough than the classics. That compromise does not work equally well at every moment, and at times you miss the dirty edges of the past, but the energy and conviction with which this album has been made are unmistakable.
“Not Your Kingdom” is not an album that tries to pretend time has stood still, and that is exactly why it works. Madball sounds like a band that knows who they are, what they want to say, and makes no apologies for it. For fans of honest, unpolished hardcore with a touch of reflection, this is more than a worthy return. (8/10) (Nuclear Blast)
