Official press release:
Santa Ana, California sludge metal veterans -(16)- take over the finest classics from Sabbath, Bee Gees, Black Flag to Scorpions on their upcoming 11th album Forgeries Vol 1, 1972-1984, to be released on May 1st via Heavy Psych Sounds.
Hear their crushing cover of the Bee Gees with new single “Tragedy”:
There comes a point in every band’s life when originality stops being a virtue and honesty takes the wheel. On their 11th long-playing record: Forgeries 1972-1984, -(16)- return to the impulse that first dragged them into loud rooms and bad ideas: the urge to steal what we love and make it semi-unrecognizable through devotion. The band says:
“We have partnered with Heavy Psych Sounds Records to release a collection of covers that function less as homage and more as a possession to be given away.”
The artwork, rendered by the ever-amazing Marald van Haasteren, completes the ritual, iconic, unsettling, and unafraid.
From the early ’90s onward, -(16)- have treated covers as translations rather than as replicas, acts of tribute and emulation, filtered through distortion, fatigue, and lived experience. The group add:
“We’ve always believed that a great cover is not mimicry but revelation. It’s finding a song that’s already lived inside you since youth and letting it crawl out, bruised and changed.
These are songs that taught us how to stand, how to fall, and how to keep going. In our collective head, this album exists because these songs demanded it. Because they screamed copy me, and we listened. In the end, Forgeries 1972-1984 stands as both a thank you note and a theft, a reminder that all music worth a damn is borrowed, broken, and passed on between friends.”
The selections on Forgeries 1972-1984 span eras and attitudes, unified not by genre but by necessity. Each track is a document of obsession, of influence absorbed and re-expressed without permission. The first volume will be issued on LP, CD and digital on May 1st, with pre-orders available via Heavy Psych Sounds.
Forgeries Vol 1, 1972-1984 track listing:
- “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)
