The Austerity Program's new album is called Bible Songs 1 and their new song is called "Isaiah 63 2 – 6". However, these aren't songs about the light of Christ and how you should all convert. No. They are about suffering, as vocalist Justin Foley will tell you.
“A few years back I realized that we keep returning to the same lyrical theme: people trying to make sense of things beyond their control. Around the same time I challenged myself to read the Bible start to finish (a near three-year slog). About a third of the way through, I saw that the narrative voices in the Bible frequently synced up with the desperation in our music and this persistent lyrical subject.
“So this record – ‘Bible Songs 1’ – just battens the hatches and sails right into it: six songs about the worst parts of the Old Testament. The misanthropy and murderous zealotry are right at home as we’re push well beyond the musical boundaries of our past. King David’s proud sexual transgressions, Moses’s demand for genocide, Zedekiah watching all his sons split from navel to chin – it’s all here.”
It also probably helps that the actual passage they refer to in the song sounds insanely violent. I mean seriously, y'all better start quoting the Old Testament more because there is a lot of seriously vengeful stuff in there.
Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress?
“I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing. It was for me the day of vengeance; the year for me to redeem had come. I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm achieved salvation for me, and my own wrath sustained me. I trampled the nations in my anger; in my wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground.”
Bible Songs 1 is out June 14. Pre-order the record here.
