The Austerity Program on Bible Songs, optimism and surrender

The concept of decline—in economic, political and social terms—is a recurring theme in the work of long-standing noise-rock duo The Austerity Program. But judging by a recent conversation with one-half of the band, guitarist/vocalist Justin Foley, the outlook was positive for the Brooklyn agitators. 

Fittingly for Foley, who works full-time as a union organizer, The Austerity Program issued their latest album—Bible Songs 2—on May Day. Whereas the band’s early releases came courtesy of Hydra Head Records, the now-defunct label founded by Isis frontman Aaron Turner, The Austerity Program have delivered their subsequent LPs via their own Controlled Burn Records.

We caught up with fast-talking Foley from a studio located in his house shortly before he and his bandmate, bassist Thad Calabrese, were about to play a couple of gigs building anticipation for Bible Songs 2.

Treble: How are you doing amid all the chaos happening in the world?

Justin Foley: As Justin Foley, operating in 2025, I have a lot in the good pile: a job, health insurance, a family who loves me. I’m an upper-middle-class white guy. I feel called to bring happiness to things—not in a way that minimizes what some people who are really “in it” are going through, but in a way that preserves a sense of hope. That doesn’t mean closing my eyes and pretending everything is fine. But let’s be honest: As bad as it is right now, it can get worse.

Treble: Is the Bible at all optimistic for you?

JF: Not in terms of what we present on the record. I grew up in a Catholic family [but] don’t hold onto [religion] anymore. I consider myself an Atheist. There are smarter, better people than me who are guided centrally by their religious motivation and impulses. Great, that’s working for them.

There are portions [of the Bible] that are admirable and resonate with me. I would be lying if I said I was immune from how it has set up a structure of moral understanding for myself. Still, the primary motivation for [Bible Songs] was the terrible stuff that’s in it. We’re not a political band, but there is a measure of protest in what we do.

Part of entering into the project of doing these two records was, first, reading the Bible cover to cover. I would say that it was, largely, an extremely boring exercise. It is not great literature. [If someone asks me] whether they should read it, I reply, “No. Don’t waste your time.”

I know, it’s like: “So, two guys in Brooklyn don’t like the Bible. Whatever.” But to the extent that we’re going to make an artistic statement about something, I take more than a little bit of offense that what is held up in our culture as being the ultimate moral authority by a lot of people includes some of the worst shit you can imagine.

There’s a story about a female slave who’s raped and left for dead, and when she actually does expire the next morning, her master wakes up, cuts her into 12 pieces and sends them to 12 places in Israel. People online say, “Well, you need to take a step back and learn what this book is really about.” And it’s, like, “Has anybody ever tried rationalizing that story in particular?” If you were that woman, how would you want to tell that story?

That’s what drove the insanity of these songs. I think art is important to the human experience because we have the ability to get extremely creative. If those impulses are not directed toward something like art—which, in the physical sense, can never really do damage to people …

Treble: … Versus, for example, the creative methods of torture used during The Crusades.

JF: Right. We need art for that reason: as a safety valve to play out our worst instincts.

Treble: As for creativity, when you came up with your band name in 1997, people probably didn’t have a solid frame of reference for what an austerity program was, right?

JF: When we started out, back in the ‘90s, Thad shot down a bunch of band names I came up with. We both had an interest in economics as a political sphere, and it was before any label paid attention to us, before we played any shows. Then we got picked up by Hydra Head, and Greece brought the “austerity program” concept [into the global conversation in 2010]. And then the irony of …

Treble: … Isis. Knew you were going in that direction.

JF: Yeah, any shit Aaron ever gave us—like, “You couldn’t have picked a better name?”—bit him in the butt.

Treble: You’ve said that if The Austerity Program were to break up, it’d be over a dispute about economics. Do you mean the band potentially going broke or disagreements over economic policy? Is there a tension between you and Thad that plays out in your band’s music?

JF: Interesting. On the one hand, there’s a disconnect between what our name implies and what the band is, in the sense that we’re, in some ways, not very minimalist at all. Anybody who’s thinking we’re not going to make a lot of noise is going to be disappointed. In that respect, we have false advertising in our name. There’s not a whole lot of austerity in terms of the number of times the drum machine is being asked to hit a bass drum.

In terms of how the band name has played out over the course of our [existence] … a few records in, I reflected on whether there’s a theme in our vocal content. What I found was that we kept coming back to the idea of people facing and experiencing things beyond their control. That seems to be very fertile [grounds] the we keep going back to.

Treble: How’s Thad?

JF: We’ve been friends since we met each other in college in 1991. We’ve grown up with each other and are very simpatico. We understand each other like brothers, in some ways; in other ways, we’re very different. I tend to think I’m a happier-go-lucky person and that Thad tends to be crankier. It’s funny when people encounter us and say to me, “What’s with that guy?”

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