Madball - Set It Off
1994 Roadrunner

Track Listing:
1.  Set It Off
2.  Lockdown
3.  New York City
4.  Never Had It
5.  It's Time
6.  C.T.Y.C. (R.I.P.)
7.  Across Your Face
8.  Down By Law
9.  Spit On Your Grave
10. Face To Face
11. Smell The Bacon (What's With You?)
12. Get Out
13. World Is Mine

Line-Up:
Vocals:  Freddy Cricien
Guitars:  Matt Henderson, Vinnie Stigma
Bass:  Hoya
Drums:  Will Shepler

Website:  www.madballnyhc.com

Horatio's Rating:  D
Overall Rating:  D

Horatio's Review:
Searching aimlessly through my stale CD collection I stumbled upon this album which I forgot I owned.  I know I didn't buy it, I assume my brother stole it around the 1995-96 era when we constantly experimented with anything remotely associated with metal.  I was so desperate once I bought the Red Hot Chili Peppers 'One Hot Minute' album.  To anyone who cares, Madball was an offshoot of 'seminal' New York hardcore freaks Agnostic Front, who made records concerning urban angst and growing up tough in Brooklyn and all that crap.  Stigma and Henderson had been part of Agnostic Front, while vocalist Cricien was the brother of Agnostic Front vocalist Roger Miret.  While Agnostic Front invented the NYC hardcore scene this album seems to have more in common with what Biohazard were doing in 1994.  It conjures up images of videos containing street hoods wearing Irish paraphernalia, looking tough in a decaying NY setting trying to intimidate with skinheads and tattoos and Yankees caps.

Madball were very concerned about the violence that plagued NY, the album mainly a rant about gun violence, in which the band pleads 'at the time 'Set It Off' was recorded (March/April 1994) 264 people had been killed by guns in NYC. STOP THE VIOLENCE!!!'.  Subject matter also includes the crumbling hardcore scene and the posers who were never true in the first place.  The horrors of jail are also chronicled in 'Down By Law', as a gang member rats out the boys and is hit in jail.  You don't turn your back on the crew!  The constant assault of how tough the mean streets these guys walk was overplayed in this period, and while watching the pathetic 'Headbangers Ball' a few weeks back I saw a new Agnostic Front video in which the band played the same familiar settings accompanied by the usual local hardmen and the ubiquitous Jamie Jasta, who hasn't smiled once since Dimebag got wasted.  Musically it's standard hardcore, fast and short, thrash-like on occasion, and mostly tedious, every song similar to the last.  A humorous relic of its time if nothing else, this does nothing for me, except raise a nostalgic grin.

Song summaries include:

Set It Off - Opens with sounds of the grimy New York streets and the chaos it leaks.  Yay.  Compared to Pro Pain's 'The Truth Hurts', this is rather dull.  For a band appalled by rampant gun crime, all they preach is violence, 'I walk the walk, and my path will be your last!!'
Lockdown - Madball are locked up for a crime they didn't commit, but being the proud bastards they are, they sit behind bars and take the rap.  'I'm not a fuckin' rat, so go fuck yourself!'  Thrash riffing gives it some worth, but not much.
New York City - Do I really need to say anything?  New York is such a mean place, you'll never survive, outsiders just don't understand, after all what would I know coming from the quaint rolling meadows of New Zealand?  'One on one fights don't exist, fist fights are extinct....it makes my stomach turn, but livin' here you gotta learn you gotta fight back when someone tries to take your life from you.'  So at any given moment, even if you're just walking down the street twenty meters to buy the paper, you can be shot and killed.
Never Had It - Fifty second dirge where the band rages at the hardcore fakes, telling them 'don't tell me how much better it was in the 80's....don't talk about the brotherhood lost in the scene.....you were always a quitter!'  Good for the phony, I say.
It's Time - Madball's here, they're pissed off and they're taking over.
C.T.Y.C. (R.I.P.) - One of Vinnie's bro's was gunned down by some callous coward.  But we'll remember him for being 'cold as life, harder than you'.  Musically identical to the previous tracks, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always boring.
Across Your Face - A supposed friend disrespected Hoya, so he slaps his face for such blatant disregard.
Down By Law  - The line 'you wake up every morning in this living hell' is used for the thirtieth time.  Some chump turned his back on the crew, so he must be whacked.  It was supposed to be for life you know?  But this dude, he turned out to be a fake, a lousy rat.  And if I have to go inside to whack the rat I will.  I'll do anything for the crew after all.  His life's over.  The clock ticks, I whack him in the cell.  You must die!
Spit On Your Grave - Vinnie's dad held him down his entire life, so now he's passed away he spits on his lonely, unmarked grave in upstate Albany.
Face To Face - Vinnie likes to fuck dudes face to face, he likes to watch their facial reactions.  Actually he berates a friend who claims to have done it all, while in reality he's living a lie.  What that lie is I cannot divulge as it is never revealed.
Smell The Bacon (What's With You?) - 'No more violence, we've had enough of this shit! Just because you got a badge, don't mean you can shoot us down!'
Get Out - Short piece of thrash, not much else.  No lyrics included, but I can easily discern the line 'straight the fuck out!'
The World Is Mine - Again no lyrics, maybe they were bored of the same themes as well.  They should have been, as we hear the line 'born into violence' once again.  Shit, he didn't know any other way, it's all he saw as a kid, so he's taking it out on me, you and the world!
Bonus Track - Listening to the lyrics it appears to be titled 'Friend Or Foe'.  Thrasher, but so what.  Thankfully this album was only twenty six minutes long.  The review took twice that time.  The play count indicates I listened to 'Get Out' four times.  That's more than 'Alexander The Great' anyway.
Horatio's Rating:  D