Band: 16
Title: Curves That Kick
Label: Relapse Records
Distribution: Rough Trade
Release date: March 3rd 2010
Review: CD (re-release)

You can honour this band with a cult-status, and it won’t be that wrong at all. Because… 16 are a legendary formation, formed about twenty years ago, and rather influential, back then, as well as nowadays.
Relapse Records are re-releasing the earliest 16-efforts because of the sold-out and/or hard-to-get status, and it all starts with the remixed and re-mastered version of the band’s debut, Curves That Kick, originally released in 1993 through Bacteria Sour.
The album stands for some straight-forward and no-nonsense symbiosis of Sludge-Hardcore-meets-Grind-meets-Crossover stuff, coming with a Punkish attitude and discordant, neo-industrialised Psycho-Grind structures.
Think Pitch Shifter, Helmet, D.R.I., early Napalm Death and so on, yet with a groovy approach and a somewhat Nuclear Assault-meets-Anthrax-alike atmosphere.

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Band: 16
Title: Drop Out
Label: Relapse Records
Distribution: Rough Trade
Release date: March 3rd 2010
Review: CD (re-release)

Relapse Records are re-releasing the earliest recordings by cult-band 16, because these releases are hard to find nowadays, and also because of its importance to the current scene.
Besides their debut album, Curves That Kick, the label also re-releases the 1996-full length Drop Out, which can be considered the ‘real’ break-through for the band within the underground scene.
Between the 1993-debut and this album, 16 released several (7”) EP’s and splits (with bands as Fresh American Lamb, Grief and The American Psycho Band; all in 1994), and the compilation Preoccupied (on Bacteria Sour).
Drop Out, initially released through Pessimiser, brings a mixture of Psycho-grinding Sludge and doomish Groovecore in the vein of all former material, combining technical guitar-riffs and a slow rhythm section, funky bass lines and a (Hard-) core throat. The sound is slightly industrialised (read: Scorn-meets-Helmet), and comes with a Death Rock / Punk-oriented atmosphere.
Undoubtedly mostly interesting!

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Ivan Tibos.