Madball

Few New York hardcore bands carry a family story quite like Madball. Their roots lie in Agnostic Front, where vocalist Roger Miret began letting his younger half-brother Freddy Cricien take the microphone during shows in the late 1980s. What began as a side project became the members' main outlet after Agnostic Front went on hiatus in 1992, and the group has since been cited as an influential force in both the New York scene and hardcore at large.

Cricien was around seven when he first sang with Agnostic Front, and he soon became the band's unofficial mascot before Vinnie Stigma gave him the Madball nickname. The project was formally founded in 1988 and played its first show in New Rochelle. Its debut album, Set It Off, arrived on Roadrunner Records in 1994, and the band's 1995 appearance at the Dynamo Open Air festival drew a crowd of 120,000. Further records followed, including Look My Way in 1998 and Hold It Down on Epitaph Records in 2000. After a brief disbandment in 2001 they returned in 2002, and they have released nine studio albums and four EPs in total.