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 (72-84), -(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. 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, completes the ritual, iconic, unsettling, and unafraid.

 

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. 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. 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 (72–84) 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 72–84 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.

 

SIDE A

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

 

SIDE B

Tragedy – Bee Gees

Bloodstains – Agent Orange

Beat My Head Against the Wall – Black Flag

St. Vitus Dance – Black Sabbath

Foreign Policy – Fear

Rocket Ride – Kiss (Bonus Track)