Madball have announced Not Your Kingdom, their 10th studio album, due July 24 via Nuclear Blast Records. The New York hardcore veterans have also shared the first single, Rebel Kids, with a performance video that keeps the concept exactly where it should be: a band, a room, and zero interest in softening the impact.
There are hardcore bands that chase reinvention and hardcore bands that remind you the wheel was already dangerous. Madball have mostly belonged to the second category. The interesting thing is not whether Rebel Kids sounds like Madball. It does. The interesting thing is how little fatigue there is in that fact when the groove is locked in and Freddy Cricien is still delivering lines like the room needs convincing.
Cricien says Rebel Kids was the first song written for the album and had been assembled for roughly two years. “The sentiment, vibe and message of the song really became the catalyst for what came after,” he says in a statement published by Consequence and Blabbermouth. “We all loved the song immediately but I couldn’t have known it would be the first single.”
Blabbermouth reports that the Rebel Kids video was co-directed by Cricien and Dave Causa, with Causa also filming and editing. The album was tracked at The Boneyard Studios in Nashville, with additional interludes recorded by Jeff “Stress” Davis and Chuck Treece at Chop Shop Studios. Andrew Baylis, Aiden Thompson, and Grady Saxman produced and engineered the record, and Lee Rouse handled final mixing and mastering.
The current Madball lineup is Cricien on vocals, Mike Gurnari on guitar, Mike Justian on drums, and Paul Delaney on bass. Blabbermouth also notes that the album art uses photography by Cornell Capa, courtesy of Magnum Photos and the Cornell Capa Estate.
Madball have a busy calendar around the release, including a May 22 Brooklyn show at The Brooklyn Monarch, Mexico dates later this month, a long European run, Vans Warped Tour Montreal in August, and Louisville’s Louder Than Life in September. Watch Rebel Kids and see the album tracklist below.