Sludge metal veterans -(16)- is back with their 11th full-length album, Forgeries (72–84) — a covers record that really heavies up some classics.
Set for release via Heavy Psych Sounds Records, Forgeries (72–84) finds the long-running sludge and noise-metal institution returning to what first pulled them into “loud rooms and bad ideas: the urge to steal what we love and make it semi-unrecognizable through devotion.” Rather than mimic their influences, -(16)- dismantle them, reframing familiar songs as something bruised, heavier, and unmistakably their own.
“We’ve always believed that a great cover is not mimicry but revelation,” the band explain. “It’s finding a song that’s already lived inside you since youth and letting it crawl out, bruised and changed.” That philosophy has guided -(16)- since the early ’90s, where covers became “translations rather than replicas,” shaped by “distortion, fatigue, and lived experience.”
The album’s title speaks volumes. Forgeries (72–84) spans decades and styles, but not genres for genre’s sake. Instead, the tracklist reads like a private map of obsession — songs that “taught us how to stand, how to fall, and how to keep going.” In the band’s words, the album exists because “these songs demanded it. Because they screamed copy me, and we listened.”
That tension sits at the heart of the record. “In the end, Forgeries (72–84) stands as both a thank you note and a theft,” they write, “a reminder that all music worth a damn is borrowed, broken, and passed on between friends.”
Visually, the album is completed by artwork from Marald van Haasteren. Pre-orders are available here, and the full album runs as follows:
- “Can’t Get Enough” – Scorpions
- “Nausea” – X
- “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll” – Blue Öyster Cult
- “Rotten to the Core” – Rudimentary Peni
- “Mother Mary” – UFO
- “Tragedy” – Bee Gees
- “Bloodstains” – Agent Orange
- “Beat My Head Against the Wall” – Black Flag
- “St. Vitus Dance” – Black Sabbath
- “Foreign Policy” – Fear
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