NEWS . JOURNALS . SHOWS . CONTACT . AUDIO . LYRICS . MISCELLANEOUS The Austerity Program is two people from New York City and their drum machine. Thad Calabrese plays bass and Justin Foley sings and plays guitar. Neither have taken any instructional courses on playing their instruments. Not even a "how-to" video. Thad and Justin began playing music together while attending college in New York City. We were not, at that point, the Austerity Program. Some day we will use this website to make available bits of the music that we recorded back then. Here's a sneak preview: we listened to a lot of Bolt Thrower. After school Justin moved up to Hartford, CT while Thad stayed in NYC. This made practicing more infrequent and difficult. In 1997, Justin moved back to the Big Apple and we began working on new material in earnest. We played our first show in 1998 at Coney Island High. Do not ever try to lie and tell us that you were there, because we personally knew each of the 11 people in the audience. At that point we kept all of our stuff in a big loft in the Bronx. Practices were either freezing cold or swelteringly hot depending upon the time of the year. Currently, Thad lives in Brooklyn and Justin lives in Queens. We get together about three times a month in an undisclosed location to practice. No clear word on what the neighbors think, but they have not yet come by to ask for a copy of the CD. Philistines. During the day Thad slogs away at a PhD and gets paid to tell people things. Justin does research for [ SEIU ] with the aim of destroying the system. Or at least providing a check on the inherent market failures of capitalism. We are both married to two wonderful women. That's "both", not "each". We've got three wonderful kids between us. Just like - uhhh - Stephen Douglas. In case you are wondering about this type of thing, we are happily affiliated with Hydra Head Records and have put out an EP called Terra Nova. We recorded it ourselves at Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx. We're working on the next recording. It's won't be done at the same place, but we'd both like to say thank you to Rev. Katrina Foster for her generosity. We do not endorse any particular products, but if the people at G. Heileman start making Powermaster again, we can be contacted through e-mail.