Comparisons to Shellac and the pudgy but sludgy Melvins are legitimate, though this insolently self-proclaimed "two-piece punk band" has produced a compelling and anarchistic debut LP. While their riotous sounds suggest roots deep within the Touch and Go back catalog, The Austerity Program extracts every drop of blood from heavy metal's engorged gallstone.
Categorically, Hydra Head Records has had an absolutely marvelous year, with releases from critically acclaimed heavy music acts like Jesu and Pelican as well as rising stars like the first-rate Big Business and the Cave In / Old Man Gloom side-project Zozobra. While all of these blissfully lack homogeneity when compared to each other, The Austerity Program seems almost like a distant cousin, one that the family decided to keep the rest of the kids far away from. Musicians Justin Foley and Thad Calabrese present Black Madonna, their staggeringly transcendent first album, in a disorienting package of DayGlo flora, barely devised track titles, and chart-dependent pseudo-academic pretension. Yet behind this impenetrable exterior lies eight songs of bipolar tension, mammoth basslines, colossal electrified guitar riffs, and splendid programmed percussion.
The turbulently epic "Song 12" initiates this delightfully disruptive record without hesitation, throwing out the proverbial red meat without wasting time on arty introductions. Foley unleashes an exuberant thrash onslaught midway, with Calabrese accenting the measures by battering his taut metal strings. "Song 17B" follows that melee with a slow-building grind that eventually erupts into something so fierce and discordant that Steve Albini himself would proudly spew onto record. Vocally, Foley bears a slight resemblance to that misanthropic nerd, a welcome joy when so much of today's heavy music forces listeners to grudgingly choose between bellyaching emo-tards and equally tormented cookie monsters. On that track, Foley seethes with impassioned and alacritous urgency, threatening the ghastly effects of an unnamed poison. Even so, his bloodthirst is countered by an abstruse wit. At the very end of the robust "Song 18," I think he actually shouts out "Dora the Explorer" after unintelligibly roaring his way through its brusque duration.
The whopping closer, "Song 16," chugs along in meticulous fits and starts, with Foley moaning gruffly over the putrescent, sludgy slog. It begins ramping up to an inevitable yet invigorating climax nearly ten minutes in, with Foley hysterically shouting out his cohorts name in a clichéd rock-and-roll call-and-response before crying out "It's time to let it go". And let loose it does, with Foley's yelp and mutter caught up in vibrant aural violence. From start to finish, Black Madonna never disappoints, somehow balancing on a bloodied razor's edge between arena-ready accessibility and bulletproof abstraction. The Austerity Program makes gripping, ballsy noise rock that overwhelms and enthralls with unparalleled particularity and indisputable talent.
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