Honor Titus - Vocals
Melvin Honore - Bass
Crazy Abe - Drums
Jason & Mason - Guitars

Rudy Giuliani, New York City's former Mayor, likes to brag about how he ended crime and cleaned up the city, but he's a liar. He didn't end crime – he just moved it. If you read the fine print there's still a murder a day in the Big Apple, but it's in East New York where all the junkies, murderers and perverts from the old Times Square now hide. In the centre of this rotten part of town, a gang of teenage punks calling themselves CEREBRAL BALLZY have emerged to start a band that sound exactly like their surroundings. Obsessed with skating, pizza, beer and Beavis & Butthead re-runs, these aren't college kids who think "the slums got so much soul." CEREBRAL BALLZY were born and raised in New York's asshole and instead of crying about it, they scream their way through a sprawling mess of 80s-hardcore and punk rock, sounding like the Beastie Boys doing drunk-covers of Bad Brains (which is pretty much exactly how the Beastie Boys started).

Led by frontman Honor Titus and bassist Melvin Honore, the band work to restore something golden to New York's Punk Rock history – BALLS! – blasting through 12 tracks in under 20 minutes on their self-titled debut album. Recorded in LA with producer Joby J. Ford (The Bronx, Trash Talk), the album tells the story of broken homes and broken bones with tracks like INSUFFICIANT FARE and DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. Already dubbed "New York's next great band" by UK music-bible NME, BALLZY have toured the UK and Europe twice, performing with Anthrax, F***ed Up and OFF! and continue their never-ending tour of America, jumping headfirst off every monitor and into every pit while puking.

I booked them for a party at SXSW, knowing they never fail to turn an okay party into a completely balls out fucking riot. They showed up an hour late after spending the previous night in the Emergency Room when a fight broke out on stage after a group of rednecks attacked them. Their drummer, Crazy Abe's eye was still swollen shut but he was laughing and drinking a beer. "You guys are the opposite of 'youth is wasted on the young'," I told him. "Yeah," he said, "I love getting wasted."

Gavin McInnes, 2011.