by Schuler // Death Drive 90.5
If you’d never heard -(16)- before, and I told you the opening two tracks from their new album, Dream Squasher, were about a daddy wanting a better life for his little girl, and the bond between a man and his dog, you’d be forgiven for thinking I was trying to turn you on to a country record. But while the band’s lyrical bread and butter has always been a shadowy, distorted version of classic country’s desperado lamentation, you’d never mistake their sound—a jagged hemming of sludge crawl and hardcore fury—for anything less than a modern metal exorcism. Like the pairing of country’s saunter with punk’s urgency, Dream Squasher is a study in seemingly contradictory forces; it is at once a shoulder-shrugging testimony of failure and regret, and an energized, vital statement from a band who, 30 years into their career, still have new ground to break.
Dream Squasher opens with two of the heaviest and catchiest songs in -(16)-’s discography. The lurch of “Candy In Spanish” gives way to the gallop of “Me & The Dog Die Together” to establish a momentum that writhes and surges throughout the record, but never fully dissipates. The band’s sole remaining founders, guitarist/songwriter Bobby Ferry and singer Cris Jerue, appear ageless and aggressive in what may well be the best performances of their careers. Jerue’s gruff cough and sarcastic cynicism are particularly vibrant this time around. Tracks like “Me & The Dog” and “Kissing The Choir Boy”—an indictment of the Catholic priesthood’s legacy of sexual abuse—display his knack for crafting lyrics marked by a plain-spokenness that never veers into banality, a poetic sensibility that’s never too nebulous or abstract for its own good.
Returning rhythm section, bassist Barney Firks and drummer Dion Thurman, have grown into an even more perfect fit for the band, particularly on songs like “Acid Tongue” in which they echo their contributions to the lumbering dirges that largely defined previous album, Lifespan of a Moth. The songs I’ve mentioned so far, as well as others like “Harvester of Fabrication," represent the best of what -(16)- fans already know and love. That’s great. And that alone would make Dream Squasher some of the band’s best work. But it’s not where this album adds to the familiar parts of -(16)-’s legacy that it thrills us most; it’s where it surprises us.
“Ride The Waves” sees Ferry and incoming lead guitarist Alex Shuster shift from Discharge to Dio-era Sabbath riffs on a dime. The above mentioned “Kissing The Choir Boy” contains the band’s deepest foray yet into the weeping guitar duels of essential NOLA sludge. "Agora (Killed By a Mountain Lion)" even opens with some Once Upon a Time in The West-style harmonica. But perhaps the record’s most show-stopping moment is “Sadlands," a bluesy hymn that sees Ferry step up to the microphone to deliver—finally, in their third decade of existence—the band’s first ever clean vocal performance. Ferry’s voice is grizzled and emotive, like a smooth hybrid of latter day Neurosis's Scott Kelly and Steve von Till. This is -(16)- like you’ve never heard them before. Think Load-era Metallica, but written and played with conviction, and really fucking good in a way that's devoid of pity or fan loyalty lip service. Look, I realize this is a batshit, bonkers description, but I stand by it. If you hear just one song from this album, “Sadlands” has to be it.
Dream Squasher is monumental, and -(16)- remain one of the most inexcusably slept-on and consistently excellent long-running acts in heavy music. This record is how punk would sound if it admitted it were too fucking exhausted to be pissed anymore. It’s how country would sound if it were honest with itself, stripped of glitz and product placement, left hollow, disaffected and wanting. And it’s how sludge should sound, created by weathered, veteran musicians who, to the listener’s benefit, just don’t know how to stop. Dream Squasher is a dejected ode to ruin and riffs. And it could not have come at a better time.
Dream Squasher drops June 5th on Relapse Records. Get the album on Bandcamp below.