 |
|
The Austerity Program, "Terra Nova EP"
Hydra Head
If they are to be believed, Thad Calabrese and Justin Foley met at acamp for wayward young men that was meant to treat feelings ofhomosexuality and to eliminate them. Rather than use this as the basisfor so much melodrama and angst to crash their prom a la Saved!,the two went on to forge anthems of fury and naked aggression, set tothe punishing sounds of a full volume drum machine that seems to borrowall its sounds from old Slayer and Heathen records. The two have analmost easy connection, playing bass and guitar over the snare smacksand cymbal crashes in a kind of symbiotic synchronization. Then, Foleysings, or tries to sing, and his voice cracks trying to sustainit all, singing about unfulfilled prophecies, disease, and otherunrelated and thrown together nonsense. It surely is not meant to be asfunny as it is, and there is a genuine passion to the inflections overthe fairly standard guitar buzz and bass-through-weak-amp tomfoolery.Unfortunately, the band lacks direction, letting their epics sprawl outpast a nine-minute mark that they should never see, and more phrasesthat don't connect. The songs use the exact same drum, guitar, and basssounds, like they were never moved or experimented with during therecording of this EP, and share the exact same tempo. Foley, for allthe passion he exudes, merely comes off like Blaise Bailey Finneganwith less taste in plagarizing. There's spaces where there shouldn'tbe, and long passages of the same notes played for far too long, likethe duo are searching for an idea while they play. They find a few, butnone of them are really noteworthy or even all that good. Maybe it'sthe age of the recordings and they've advanced a lot, but I doubt it.They kind of know their limitations, or so the lyrics seem to suggest,as Foley howls "I knew this ride would never last" and other fatalistremarks. They're probably right if they continue on like this, asthere's very little in these songs to latch on to for more than a fewseconds.
If they are to be believed, Thad Calabrese and Justin Foley met at acamp for wayward young men that was meant to treat feelings ofhomosexuality and to eliminate them. Rather than use this as the basisfor so much melodrama and angst to crash their prom a la Saved!,the two went on to forge anthems of fury and naked aggression, set tothe punishing sounds of a full volume drum machine that seems to borrowall its sounds from old Slayer and Heathen records. The two have analmost easy connection, playing bass and guitar over the snare smacksand cymbal crashes in a kind of symbiotic synchronization. Then, Foleysings, or tries to sing, and his voice cracks trying to sustainit all, singing about unfulfilled prophecies, disease, and otherunrelated and thrown together nonsense. It surely is not meant to be asfunny as it is, and there is a genuine passion to the inflections overthe fairly standard guitar buzz and bass-through-weak-amp tomfoolery.Unfortunately, the band lacks direction, letting their epics sprawl outpast a nine-minute mark that they should never see, and more phrasesthat don't connect. The songs use the exact same drum, guitar, and basssounds, like they were never moved or experimented with during therecording of this EP, and share the exact same tempo. Foley, for allthe passion he exudes, merely comes off like Blaise Bailey Finneganwith less taste in plagarizing. There's spaces where there shouldn'tbe, and long passages of the same notes played for far too long, likethe duo are searching for an idea while they play. They find a few, butnone of them are really noteworthy or even all that good. Maybe it'sthe age of the recordings and they've advanced a lot, but I doubt it.They kind of know their limitations, or so the lyrics seem to suggest,as Foley howls "I knew this ride would never last" and other fatalistremarks. They're probably right if they continue on like this, asthere's very little in these songs to latch on to for more than a fewseconds.samples:
