16

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who got into the feral, teeth-grinding snarl of 16's hoarse and nihilistic sound in the '90s. Their red-eyed, drug-soaked groove struck that same bad nerve as prime FUDGE TUNNEL or maybe BARKMARKET — not exactly metal, too evil for punk, adehering to the same filth-caked, rotten-jawed muse as heavier sludge merchants like EYEHATEGOD but a bit more trebly and groovy. Call it skater sludge, maybe, I dunno. All I know is, the music on albums like "Drop Out" and "Blaze of Incompetence" was harrowing (heroin?) stuff, spiteful and antagonistic but ruthlessly catchy at the same time, mantras for bad living that no one else on earth seemed to be paying attention to at the time.

Long years later, 16 has resurfaced on Relapse and have delivered what is unquestionably the most visible album of their long career (term used loosely). And it's tough to say this without alienating the six people who already liked the band, but... it sounds clean. The vocals are up front and center, a change from the "desperate yelling down the hallway" sound they had on past efforts, and the guitars are big, meaty and forceful -- more metallic than in the past. Songs like "You Let Me Down (Again)" are still as angry and bleak as ever lyrically, but are shockingly upbeat and, by 16 standards, practically boogie-ing with rock and roll abandon.

There are shades of the old flinty, gritty 16 scrape, especially on songs like "Flake", but the faster tempos, cleaner production and more straightforward metal riffs add up to make "Bridges to Burn" a bit, well, generic. It's definitely rawer and meaner than your average head-down metal chug, but it lacks a bit of the venom that made 16 so damn awesome in the first place. It falls into that endless middle ground of "it's good, but..." releases that don't flat-out suck, but probably won't be the one you reach for when you want a fix. "Bridges To Burn" is decent, and if it gets the band back on the radar and knocks the rust off, I'm perfectly willing to accept it as a warm-up for greater, fouler and more curdled things to come.