Opener Tethered takes less than a second to state its credentials, dripping with swagger and a toughness so overwhelming it would surely tip over into parody in lesser hands, but doesn’t even wobble. Not Your Kingdom skirts so close to material that would be corny if it were in basically anyone else’s hands, but it’s emphatically not because this is Madball, and they’ve been doing this for nearly four decades. Most bands that play this hard lose the ability to pull off what they once could with age, as the toughness starts to feel performed and laughable, but Freddy Cricien sounds weathered as fuck, having lived this music for his entire life, and it sounds completely legitimate.

Hardcore is bigger now than at any point in Madball’s career with Turnstile, Knocked Loose and Speed all citing them as a massive influence, and a new generation of bands carrying the tradition forward into arenas. Meanwhile the NYHC community is also mourning the recent death of Lou Koller from Sick of It All, a legend whose loss has reverberated through the entire scene. Not Your Kingdom isn’t recorded as a tribute to Lou, but it may as well function as one because the themes and rules of NYHC are so consistent. Brotherhood, pointing out hypocrisy, and taking no shit. Madball are here to prove that the template still has enormous power. The Ride sounds bigger than the sweaty two hundred cap venues that Madball were born in, and much of the album has the feel of a daytime festival slot with a big circle pit in the sunshine. Chase a Dream closes the record at a relentless tempo, drums hammering without mercy, and then it’s over in half an hour. Ten albums and nearly forty years in, Madball sound as ferocious, swaggering and legitimate as ever. The new generation are wearing Madball shirts and citing them as influences, and the band have responded with a triumphant victory lap.