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The Number 12 Looks Like You
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HQ: Bergen County, NJ NOW PLAYING: Mongrel (EYEBALL) WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: On Mongrel, the Number 12 show off their spastic mathcore chops, stop-start riffs, dually shrieked vocals and fun, jazzy passages. Now throw up those Devil horns! YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE? The Dillinger Escape Plan / Blood Brothers / Daughters You needn't be an extreme metal fan in order to appreciate the Number Twelve Looks Like You-vocalists Jesse Korman and Justin Pedrick, guitarists Alexis Pareja and Jamie Mcilroy, bassist Chris Russell and drummer Jon Karel-who take their name from an episode of The Twilight Zone where people's faces are transformed from beautiful to hideous. That's because the band incorporate grind, jazz, metal and screamo into a combustible blend where the songs erupt like fits. The Number 12 are an acquired taste, to be sure, but that's something they're completely okay with. "What we do isn't easily digestible for the average listener," says Korman, one of the band's two vocalists, who dropped out of high school at age 15 to concentrate solely on the band. "This album is more mature. Our other records are too choppy, and this is our definitive sound. I have my own record label [Piermont Records], and my business partner, who never liked heavy music, loves this record-and he's not just saying it because we work together!" It's easy to see why Mongrel got a ringing endorsement from a non-heavy music fan, since it's not just an extreme grind record with jazz passages designed expressly for metal aficionados. It's more structured than previous Number 12 efforts, which were often exhausting to listen to. Songs like "Sleeping With The Fishes, See?" repeat patterns and are therefore memorable, and it sounds like the band have settled into a groove; let's just hope they don't have to deal with comparisons to their fellow statesmen-and godfathers of jazz-grind hybrid-the Dillinger Escape Plan. "I just hope people get it and don't call us the next Dillinger," Korman says. "Sure, it's a compliment because they set the bar, but our sound is not what they're doing. We recorded demos, listened to them and changed things so we wouldn't sound like anyone else. I just hope people who hear it are like, 'Wow,' even if they don't like it." Another reason you needn't be 'metal' to like the Number 12 is that the band book eclectic tours, logging miles with everyone from Thursday to Between The Buried And Me to Minus The Bear. ("We don't get typical metalheads or even 14-year-old scenesters," explains Korman. "We attract everyone!") While Mongrel isn't a lyrical concept album, the band made some pretty dramatic-and schizophrenic-choices to set apart the music even further. "We figured we'd base the art, the order of the songs and all the different parts within the songs upon a person who is a mongrel, who is so fucked up and has too much going on. Just like our music!" Amy Sciarretto |
