The first thing the record tells you to do is quit. “Throw in the towel/Wait for the sequel” is the hook and title line for “Throw in the Towel,” and lyrics so efficiently encapsulating a perspective aren’t easy to come by. It’s not about fighting back, or overcoming a thing, or manufacturing triumph from failure by learning a lesson or whatever. Fucking quit. At least they say there’ll be a sequel. That’s more than you get in “Me and My Shadow.”

By 2009, when they released Bridges to Burn at the dawn of their ongoing collaboration with Relapse Records, then-Los-Angeles-now-San-Diego-based sludgecore slammers 16 had already quit once. Founded in 1991, the band honed their disaffection to an ever-sharper point across four full-lengths and more than a handful of shorter releases; singles, splits and EPs. They called it a day after 2002’s Zoloft Smile, but came back ahead of their 12-track fifth full-length with the lineup of vocalist Cris Jerue, guitarist Bobby Ferry, bassist Tony Baumeister and drummer Jason Corley.

Of those, only Ferry still remains in the band. Corley (also Fistula, King Travolta, Scumchrist, etc.) was gone in summer ’09. Baumeister (also The Cutthroats 9, Æges) had joined in 1993 and after 2012’s Deep Cuts From Dark Clouds was replaced by Barney Firks. Jerue made it to 2020’s Dream Squasher (review here) before taking his rasp, seethe, bellow and screams and going home. Trading out members of the rhythm section and even the odd second guitarist along the way was nothing new for 16 by then, but the band has persisted, much to the aggro-benefit of those fortunate enough to have been crushed by the riffage since.

Meeting cynicism and disillusion with hardcore-born chug and charge like that of “Monday, Bloody Monday” (“It’s the worst day of my life/I fucked up again”) and burning the ground with feedback before “So Broken Down” (“Suicidal deathwish/All because of you”) unveils its almost thrashy tension, the inward and outward trajectories of 16‘s loathing end up in a kind of balance — they hate themselves as much as they hate you as much as they hate everything — but the punk/core spirit underlying never lets them dwell too long in one place. “Me and My Shadow,” with its massive breakdown in the middle, is the longest song at just over five minutes, and they back it with the all-go pummel of “Man, Interrupted” (As I sharpen the blade now/I think of you”) at 2:41.

What comes through, then, is an immediacy that’s still resonant 15 years later, and a sound that for the band was the heaviest-landing production they’d ever had. It was recorded and mixed by Jeff Forrest (Scott Hull mastered), who has helmed everything the band has done, and in comparison to Zoloft Smile, it trades out rawness for impact, fuller in the low end (aren’t we all?) but still able to move on a track like “Permanent Good One” through the rhythmic punches and caustic distorted vocals. Raging on “What Went Wrong?” and “You Let Me Down (Again),” Bridges to Burn grants no boons and offers only the shortest moments of respite before the next attack. It is cognizant of its harshness, and the lack of letup across its span is as purposeful as the circle-pit shove of “So Broken Down.”

It’s a special kind of fuckall, and Bridges to Burn was the beginning of a new era for 16. Signing to Relapse and a studio comeback — even one just a few years after they stopped playing shows and extended the omnidirectional middle finger that defined their ethic as a band to the band itself; it’s not like they were gone for decades — was a big deal, and the band delivered a work that has in some ways helped shape everything they’ve done since. They were more metal than they’d been before, but still linked in style to both sludge and hardcore, and tighter in terms of the performances captured in a way that allowed both the storytelling of the lyrics and the outright bludgeon of the instruments behind Jerue‘s gutted-out vocals to be focal points for the listener in a mix with broader dimensionality. Always heavy, always mean, they got heavier and meaner, and while Bridges to Burn wasn’t a radical departure from Zoloft Smile, it felt like declarative in stepping up to meet the moment of its arrival.

16 have had four albums since Bridges to Burn — the aforementioned Deep Cuts From Dark Clouds, 2016’s Lifespan of a Moth (review here), and in this decade, Dream Squasher and 2022’s Into Dust (review here), the latter of which made the pivotal change of Ferry taking over on vocals feel like just another day in Doomtown — and they had four albums before it. It won’t be the case whenever they eventually follow-up Into Dust, if they do — one never knows — but Bridges to Burn is the centerpiece right now of their nine-full-length-deep discography, and it makes sense in that position. It’s where they left behind the band they’d been and started to evolve into the band they’ve become.

And I guess in some ways, it’s the lack of platitudes that seems to refreshing about Bridges to Burn. Yeah, you wait for the sequel in “Throw in the Towel,” but there’s no guarantee you aren’t gonna get your ass kicked again when that sequel comes. Listening now, 16 feel like a bomb dropped on toxic positivity — the kind of self-congratulations and empty affirmations you buy on t-shirts at Target and Wal-Mart; “I’m trying my best” and “Kindness matters” sloganeering as if to highlight the unspoken messaging, “I’m feeling crushed by life” and “Everyone is an asshole” — saying the quiet part out loud when the quiet part is “fuck everything.” It’s not the kind of record you reach for every day, but when the drums go half-time in “Me and My Shadow” and the chug gets stately, there’s no denying the righteousness of 16‘s assault. A decade and a half later, it still resonates in worldview, groove and abrasion.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Which I say knowing that’s like enjoying being punched in the face. Either way, thanks for reading.

—

The Patient Mrs. began her Fall teaching semester yesterday and The Pecan starts first grade on Tuesday following the Labor Day holiday, so a long and busy summer is coming to an end. The start of school isn’t without some anxiety after the sheer clusterfuck that was Sept.-Dec. 2023 in that regard, but the sincere hope is that the momentum that she had by June — all that not-hitting she was doing — can continue into the new year. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be home alone, then. Me and the dog, anyhow. In two weeks I’ll be devastatingly lonely, but especially after The Patient Mrs. spent the bulk of this week at her office after being out every night last week for social or professional obligations, it’ll be a welcome break to have some restorative-boredom alone time. I’ll write. I’ll play Zelda. I’ll smoke a pre-noon bowl and take a 90-minute shower. And I’ll breathe a bit in a way that is possible when one isn’t doing the cruise-activity-directorship that is modern parenting.

I have reviews slated all next week starting with Delving on Monday, but we’ll see how it goes. Until then, my time is up and I am not in a position to argue for more. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks again for reading.

FRM.

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