When the closest you can get to gentle melancholy is a song about a suicide leading to the loss of a beloved pet (Me And The Dog Die Together), it may be time to reconsider your world view. Nevertheless, this is the precarious mental position of sludge metal loons –(16)- whose horrifically bleak subject matter is matched only by their thunderous sonic assault. Dream Squasher is certainly not for the faint of heart, and from the depths of despair –(16)- draw a strength that translates into the corrosive riffs that dominate the album. With Bobby Ferry’s dynamic vocals to the fore, Dream Squasher is a nightmarish morass that will do much to appeal to those misanthropic souls who worship at the altar of Eyehategod, The Melvins and Down.
The album opens with the misleadingly titled Candy In Spanish, and wastes not a second introducing listeners to the band’s sonically punishing approach as a swathes of feedback cascade from the speakers. With stop-start riffs worthy of vintage Helmet, the band lock into a punishing groove that is as physical in its impact as emotional, and Bobby’s vocals (swathed in fx) seem to cry out from the heart of the storm the band whip up. The fast and furious Me And The Dog Die Together conspires to have the catchiest chorus ever to find itself plated in such acid-etched armour, and if the subject matter is bleak, it still makes for one hell of an Adrenalin-charged listen. –(16)- thrive on such contradiction, and the track itself sounds like Mike Patton fronting The Melvins. The pace slows considerably on the Sabbath-esque Sadlands, with doom-laden organ and clean vocals conjuring up a suitably majestic atmosphere that is as awesome as it is unexpected. It leaves the listener disarmed and unprepared for the sheer, wide-eyed savagery of Harvester Of Fabrication, a monolithic assault on the senses that sees stair-stepping guitars swirling around Dion Thurman’s thunderous beat in a manner that leaves the listener dizzied and bloodied… a feeling further enhanced by the horror sample that greets you on none-more-brutal album centre-piece Acid Tongue. It grinds the listener into the dirt for six punishing minutes and then dissipates as suddenly as it arrived.
Opening the album’s second half, winsome harmonica sits in a bath of gently rippling reverb in a manner reminiscent of early Sabbath. It’s a feint, of course, and after a minute of lulling the listener into a reverie, Agora (The Mountain Lion) strikes, its claws out and ready to rend flesh from bone. The feral Ride The Waves ups the ante considerably, recalling the early, clattering-thrash of Sepultura before the cheekily-titled Summer Of 96 arrives on the back of a chrome-plated groove that will bang your head into a neck brace. Another puntastic title emerges in the form of Screw Unto Others, a punk-infused trawl through the sludgiest of riffs, Bobby neatly alternating between an enraged roar and eerie cleans as the guitars descend into a feedback-soaked hell of their own making. The album ends with Kissing The Choir Boy, a surprisingly taut finale that gives the listener a nice meaty riff, complete with harmonised guitars, to get their teeth into. Driven by Dion’s powerful, yet innovative percussion and with vocals lost in a maze of deftly plotted reverb, it’s exactly the finale the album needed and it leaves the listener feeling as if they’ve just awoken, sweat-soaked and disoriented, after a particularly gruelling nightmare.
In case you’re in any doubt, I fucking loved this LP. Dark and dirty, both performance and production are exceptional and the band even manage to adopt an approach where the music is simultaneously anti-commercial and yet catchy-as-fuck. It’s a difficult line to tread, yet –(16)- utterly nail it. Buy it. Steal it. Get a carrier pigeon to deliver it via USB… you need this album in your life, if only to remind you just how much worse things can get. Riffs, riffs and more riffs, this album is an absolute beast. 9/10
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