Sometimes, comments are a justification. Sometimes you have to do things that seem like the wrong thing to when reading the code (like sending a POST request instead of a GET when a GET is clearly more appropriate, but you have to talk to a poorly-written API that will only respond to POSTs on that route). Comments help rationalize that decision for the next guy.

I also find TODO comments quite helpful. It requires far fewer brain cycles to process a TODO comment than to parse the code, figure out what it's doing, and make an assertion that it's incomplete.

Comments can also make code much more approachable to junior programmers, who may not have heard of principles like Tell Don't Ask, or Composition Over Inheritance. When I'm working with a junior dev, I find that comments usually reduce the number of interruptions I receive that are along the lines of, "Hey why did you do this thing this way?"

Really, it's just not a good idea to make sweeping generalizations like, "Comments are always failures". The real world has time and budget constraints, and comments are sometimes the most effective way to satisfy those without screwing the next developer to read the code.