Miserable people worldwide who listen to miserable music had a pretty good year in 2009, as Los Angeles' sludge/downer-rock trailblazers -16- returned with Bridges to Burn after not releasing an album since 2003's Zoloft Smile. Now they're back with their second post-hiatus offering, and it improves on Bridges on some levels (sharper songwriting, switching up the time signatures out of the band's comfortable 4/4 zone now and again), but, really, this is more of what we've come to expect from the band: mid-tempo, pummelling sludge rock. -16- albums don't really differ as much as they just hurt the listener; we're not talking subtle differences in artistic vision, we're talking about ex-cons pummelling you for looking at them funny when they ask you for a smoke. Then they do it again a few years later with a new album and a different drummer, which they have here in Mateo Pinkerton, who definitely suits the band's style well, providing an extremely solid backbone to these songs, which are just unspeakably heavy in the band's unique way. On Deep Cuts from Dark Clouds, they do their thing as well, if not better, than they ever have. Need proof? Check out "Beyond Fixable" and "Only Photographs Remain," the most hummable sludge-rock anthems you'll hear all year.
Read an interview with -16- here.
(Relapse)Read an interview with -16- here.