God Program

Imagine if …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead decided to make actually heavy music instead of being satisfied with a fan base of dudes that just got dumped and have read exactly one novel. Now imagine Amy from Evanescence pivoted from being elf-goth and injected Converge directly into her veins.

Relatively fresh East Coast harbingers of emo-laced metalcore, God Program recently released their album promo, Fragments of Illusion, on Bandcamp. The tightly packed 2-song onslaught ripples with intensity and seamlessly juxtaposes galloping metallic riffs with moments of melodic reprieve. The overall effect is heaviness and speed without over-bloated density. Where some metalcore leans in and brutalizes you with the entire sonic kitchen sink, here you have a slight pull back, giving the riffs room to breathe and shining a spotlight on frontwoman Marla Verdoini's remarkable vocal range. It’s a relative rarity to have a singer exhibit mastery of both sides of the heavy music coin, able to both sing and scream at the drop of a cymbal.