Weedeater - 16 Tons - Download (2014)

Labels: Season Of Mist
Review by: Alex Deller

It has to be said: the second album from Weedeater did, in many regards, represent more of the same. The riffs linger between bruisingly heavy and thoroughly listenable, proudly swaggering like a Deep South Sabbath arisen from a three-day bender with hell in its guts and breath capable of stripping paint. The vocals, if you can even call them that, remain consistently horrid; less a nod to verse/chorus/verse traditionalism than an attempt to emulate a grumbling wolfman who’s being forced to scrape his own wet shit off a concrete floor with a shovel. Much of the time these things form something somewhat standard. Strong-sounding, eminently enjoyable and hard to dismiss, but somewhat standard nonetheless. The back-to-back goodness of ‘Time Served’ with its kickass refrain and the oozing, pustulent slow motion sickness of ‘Dummy’ raise the album’s game, though, and mean you can’t quite switch off, kick back and nonchalantly enjoy the riffs. This, in case you were wondering, is a pretty good thing. Indeed, it’s a slight shame they didn’t drag even more of these curveballs out of the bag but, what the heck, what we’ve got is what we’ve got and that’s still pretty okay when all is said and done.