Madball

There's a hilarious part in the DVD documentary that accompanies Madball's latest album, Legacy, that shows the band sitting at a roadside restaurant. Understandably out of place in milquetoast middle America, bass player Hoya Roc sneers under his breath at "all these white people." Madball is a New York hardcore band, and don't you forget it. This time around, however, Madball comes bearing a sense of how far the band has come from its humble beginnings, a hobby for frontman Freddie Cricien — then age 12 — who wanted to perform "throwaway Agnostic Front songs." Cricien has wised up a bit. The songs, he explains on the DVD, "aren't always about beating you down — sometimes they're about how I'm not going to beat you down." Whether or not that counts as progress, Cricien's somber demeanor and air of a man struggling for peace continue to bring a dimension of real life to Madball's music.