PREMIERE - 'Bali Hai', a New Track From The Austerity Program Pre-Project Polonium

NB - this post, like the next seven over the next couple days - were all written last week, but a Blogspot fuck-up has kept them hidden away - until now. But it seems fitting that I launch this premiere on Easter Sunday - it's like setting Buzz the Bunny on fire on his birthday. Bon appetit.

One of my all-time favourite EPs - nay, releases - has been Backsliders & Apostates Will Burn by New York two-piece The Austerity Program. It probably isn't even their best effort to date - 2014's Beyond Calculation was delightfully brutal - but the way in which this four-track behemoth grabbed me by the throat and never let go - it was electrifying, a sensation that doesn't dissipate the more I listen to it.

Now the duo are still in a form of hiatus (well, have sequestered themselves into the bowels of the earth). So in lieu of a new album, it is Sonic Masala's absolute pleasure to be airing for the first time 'Bali Hai', a furious cut from the guys' pre-Austerity project, Polonium. How is this new? Simple really - while writing their new record, the duo went back to the original recordings, some ten years ago, and re-recorded them. In the band's words, Polonium was an idea to be a not serious metal band, then got serious, then not serious again. The vocal howls, the double bass drum attacks, the fucked-up time signatures that have become AP staples, started fermenting and congealing in these moments. And the result is ten track behemoth Seraphim, out next month, cross-referencing Bolt Thrower thrashings, Big Business bombast and early Melvins minimalism with seething heat and ground-level anguish - Big Black with busted balls, then. It was originally written by kids in isolation, desperately creating sounds that they themselves couldn't access - now recorded with the brutality and finesse of musicians 20 years their senior (though not necessarily wiser). Seraphim sounds out on paper like a curio, a document of an event that only two people witnessed. Seraphim plays out like a crossroads purging, an aural snapshot of souls being sold, contracts irrevocably signed in blood, shit and tears of laughter. 'Bali Hai' signs off the record and is typically frenetic and wild (and most like AP) - and seeing as it's also the title of a recent Better Call Saul episode, a show whose character arc is foretold (the guy goes to the dark side, regardless of his good intentions) and yet we revel in Saul's struggle with the light and dark parts of his psyche, in both humorous and violent measures - it seems bizarrely apt. Except with Polonium, they turn into The Austerity Program, which is better news for us all. Buy Seraphim here.

This Austerity Program Is Calculated Brilliance

I don't remember exactly the moment I "discovered" New York noisy duo The Austerity Program - but it was probably around the time I was heavily into listening to Hydra Head records and in particular Helms Alee's Night Terror. if you haven't listened to TAP's seminal 2010 EP Backsliders & Apostates Must Burn, do yourself a favour and DO IT RIGHT NOW. Don't even read the rest of this post. Just do that - NOW (and if you live in Brisbane, there is definitely a copy of it in Tym Guitars - I put it on the shelf especially yesterday).


It's taken a bunch of years for these warped brothers in nascent narcissism and devilish grins to bring us a new release. They scurried from the embers of Hydra Head Records and formed their own label, Controlled Burn (along with fellow brothers Nonagon, whose own The Last Hydronaut LP was their first release - and we fucking loved it). But we FINALLY have Beyond Calculation - and it's everything I hoped for and more. With one guitar, one bass, one vocal and one pissed off drum machine (how else can it cope with such brutality? The machines seethe too...), this band flays the outliers of society, laying their situations bare and brandishes the remains with maniacal glee, jamming it down the throats of sympathisers and non-believers both.


Steve Albini's abrasive outfits will come to mind here, but there is something more inherently comical, garish and nightmarish about Beyond Calculation that he and his hoary brethren could never broach. Yes, each song is calibrated and refined to such a brutal dexterous distillation that they cut through the thickest of red tape and indifferent hides; yes, the impassioned cynical howl of Justin Foley turns from playful to destructive in a heartbeat (or heart attack). They can be tightly coiled mechanical beasts of burden; lumbering colossi of brutal metal dirge; intricate triangulations of technique, wit and excess. Overall, though, The Austerity Program is shining the magnifying glass on the 21st century with furious intent - and in most cases, the insects under scrutiny is us.

Pick up Beyond Calculation here - it's a must.

Scratchin' Round - So Stressed, Nonagon, Violent Past

This guy tells me today that he did a management course last year. Is it wrong to think immediately worse of someone who admits to such a thing? Nope. He goes, 'Yeah, they told us that if employees are getting their backs up about things, you just form a committee and let them bluster. After that, it's too late for them to do anything." Seriously. Some chump stands up in front of a whole bunch of other chumps and straight-face tells them how to make chumps out of everyone else. I cringe whenever I hear people ask for feedback.



So Stressed have not been to management school. And from what I hear, if anyone tried to junk them into a committee, the noise would be so resounding that the bosses would have to up and leave the building. I'm beginning to think that this might be the only way to break through; to make the noise you want to make, for as loud and long as possible; to give them THIS as feedback when they ask for it.

I 'strongly agree' with all of Attracted to Open Mouths but if you're too busy collating data for your focus group presentation, you still need to make time to give 'Hairstyles' a go.

And damn, if I ever get up the guts to give it back to 'em, I'm gonna play Nonagon. Out on their own label, Controlled Burn, the name sums up the sound perfectly - this is organised stuff. Organised stuff capable of doing some real damage. Controlled, yeah, but in the back of your head you just know that while it's meant to be under wraps, next minute could very well be licking the building upside down, turning all that carbon they thought was theirs into atmosphere forever. That'll get 'em up the corporate ladder quicker.    

'The Last Hydronaut' is drilling, relentless and passionate in a way that a lot of music out our way - the lazily complacent, climate change denying, land down under the average line of intelligence - isn't. See, 'cos if you think about things for a bit, and you don't just want to roll over and take it, this is the kind of music you'd make, I reckon.

But wait, maybe I'm getting a bit carried away. Burning the place down isn't the only way to resist getting caught up in the tidal wave of ignorance threatening to wash us all into frothy oblivion - and plus, it'll just add to the whole (very fucking real) emissions problem. Maybe getting your mates together to spread the news rather than the gasoline is a better idea? There's no easy answers. But you do have to make people realise that they don't give a shit before they will.



Violent Past are infected by the malaise, but there's some self-awareness here on Demons, something that looks to the future and gets a little ready. 'Yeah, I'm wearing a white business shirt,' it says, 'but I'm hungover and I ain't cleaning that stain off today, and who knows what'll happen tomorrow? You really want me to join your working party?'

So whether you spit or march or yell or whatever, just don't let some chump pin you down - or at least make the clammy fucker have to put down his briefcase to do it.