Album Review: 16, Guides for the Misguided
Guides for the Misguided is the 10th 16 full-length, and at least on paper, there are few mysteries about it. 16, as a group, have more than 30 years under their belt, and their sound is well established someplace between sludge, hardcore and metal, a malleable balance more often than not set to bludgeon. And the thing about the band at this point is if every couple years they wanted to churn out a collection of hard-hitting, probably-fast, probably-aggressive riffs and shouts, it would most likely be fine. The band would go through the motions, the fans who dig it would dig it, and the planet keeps spinning.
Fronted by founding guitarist Bobby Ferry, who assumed the mantle of lead vocalist for 2022’s Into Dust (review here) after Cris Jerue‘s departure following 2020’s Dream Squasher (review here), with lead guitarist/producer Alex Shuster, bassist Barney Firks and drummer Dion Thurman, 16 walk a harder line. Since coming back from a break between 2002 and 2009 with their first album for Relapse Records, 2009’s Bridges to Burn (discussed here), the band have not only been productive, but have charted a course of incremental, regular growth and progression that Guides for the Misguided puts into emphasis as the revamped dynamic of the band continues to shake out.
The core approach hasn’t changed. “Resurrection Day” gets very, very, very heavy by the time its five minutes are up, and the subsequent Bad Brains cover “Give Thanks and Praises” is only too happy to mop up what’s left afterward with punkish fervor. But for the first time, 16 feature some cleaner singing alongside the more familiar shouts, growls and rasps, and as ferocious as opening duo “After All” and “Hat on a Bed” are, the textures brought to pieces like “Blood Atonement Blues,” which follows, touches on horror cinema atmosphere and boasts a standout hook in the line “The dead’ll claim you,” as well as “Proudly Damned,” “Desperation Angel” and “Kick Out the Chair,” which is the only song on Guides for the Misguided over six minutes long and precedes a bonus Superchunk cover “The Tower,” are new for them.
Traditionally speaking, this is dangerous ground. A band who’ve been around for a long time, who are known for doing things a certain way, and so on. The truth is 16 have never been so pigeonholed, and even in their ’90s pill-popper sludgepunk yore, they were a tough act to pin down, and “Fortress of Hate” doesn’t make it any easier with its layering of clean and harsh takes, amid a telltale chug that is as characteristic an element as 16‘s sound has beyond the fact that so often their delivery is unified in having the force of a facebound hammer. I honestly don’t know if metal bands getting crap for trying to sing is a thing anymore, but it used to be.
A generation ago, people talked about bands selling out when stuff like that happened, but 16 aren’t stupid and if you hear Guides for the Misguided and think it’s the sound of a band who’ve ‘gone commercial’ — whatever that would even mean for heavy music in 2025 — then it’s a question of perspective. Who would 16 be selling out to? And for what? You think someone’s just waiting with a pile of cash to trade to a band of dudes in their 40s and 50s for their integrity as represented by harsh vocals?
Wouldn’t that be nice.
Instead, united around a familiar-enough anti-religious lyrical theme, 16‘s songs are simply able to do more than they were before. That’s true in the likes of “Proudly Damned,” which opens from its lumbering verse into a more open hook, setting up intertwining solos with harmonized dramatic melody as a preface for what’s to come in “Kick Out the Chair,” as well as in the plod-into-chug-charge in the unrepentantly catchy “Fire and Brimstone Inc.” — the chorus, “I came here believing in nothing/You reaffirmed my faith…” arriving a second time only after a suitable build is laid out, only to come back around again on the quick after the solo as the push to the finish. “Desperation Angel,” which is the shortest song at 2:40, is suitably frenetic but in-part melodic, and it’s probably the most efficient encapsulation on Guides for the Misguided of what the clean vocals add to the mix in terms of letting the band do new things, explore new sounds, and incorporate these ideas into their songwriting modus.
So, before you get to the actual particulars of 16, of Guides for the Misguided, what the album does and adds to the pantheon of the band’s catalog, on the most superficial level you have a band who’ve been around for 34 years who not only haven’t ‘settled’ in terms of their sound, but are actively pursuing new avenues of expression. It’s an admirable enough concept to be noteworthy, but that shouldn’t take away from the effectiveness of the material throughout. “Resurrection Day” — did I mention it gets very, very, very heavy? — gives over to the Bad Brains tune.
Following that rush, “Kick Out the Chair” — the guitar imagining a meeting between Scorpions and Crowbar that, sadly, never happened in our shithole timeline — gives about as much of a summary as Guides for the Misguided could ask, the doomed sensibility of the first several minutes holding firm in terms of atmosphere even as the riffs takeoff not to return, given a thick-rock epilogue in “The Tower,” which isn’t anything outlandish in terms of sound but is probably a song the band decided to do because they like it. 10 records in, one would not fault them digging a thing, even if it’s the likes of “Proudly Damned” and “Resurrection Day” and “Blood Atonement Blues” that’s most likely to result in repeat listens.
The word I haven’t said yet that I’m inevitably going to say is “underrated.” And yeah, part of what’s not being given its due here is the above — that 16 have been at this a long time and have never put out the same LP twice, never stopped looking forward, and never stopped being bold enough to actually try something after thinking of it — but whether you’re engaging from the point of view of the lyrics, the heft and impact of their tones, or the sort of nastyface epic groove they have a tendency to unfold at will, there’s really no getting around 16 as undervalued. Guides for the Misguided, with a familiar aggressive underpinning and a fresh sense of exploration and purpose, marks a step along a vibrant-if-destructive creative path. If you can get to it, it’ll bring you along. If not, it’ll be there waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
Great review JJ, you always have the best words!
And I can’t wait for this album!!