Some albums sneak up on you, imprinting their music on your consciousness like a stealth viral attack, if you only give them the time and opportunity to do so. Black Madonna, The Austerity Program's debut full-length is that kind of album. On the face of it, the appeal seems somewhat suspect – a Big Black-ish guitar and bass duo (with a drum machine) who've finally had the chance to focus their cobbled-together, entirely riff-based songs, largely instrumental, but with a smattering of hardcore-ish vocals, into a complete album for an actual record company. I sense the desultory side-effects of white-collar lifestyles with too much leisure time and too much access to musical toys here, the sort of thing best confined to Myspace hell.

In actual fact, although Black Madonna lacks somewhat in textural fullness, it's a compelling album, a Spartan testing-ground of intricately planned riff maneuvers that partake of mathoid calculation, punky discord, droning iteration and an oddly baroque construction, albeit with simple, power chord-based elements. The songs here don't have standard names – just numbers – Song 17B, Song 12, and so on, and there are two Untitled tracks, to boot. But The Austerity Program's lack of nomenclatural creativity, and adherence to a narrowly-defined technique is offset by the ingenuity with which they think of things for a humble guitar-and-bass, abetted by a drum machine, to do within these bare, and yes, austere confines. There's a part of me that would like to see what these guys would do with a real drummer, and more vocal songs (the few vocal parts that are present are a total hoot, somewhere between Buzz Osbourne, Frank Black and of course Steve Albini), but there's room for this odd, refracted vision of hardcore/punk/noise/math/metal/drone/post-metal riffage in the musical spectrum.

Year of Release: 2007

Label: Hydrahead