THE NUMBER TWELVE LOOKS LIKE YOU will release "Howls From The Holographic Heart" on Friday, October 16 through Equal Vision Records — their first full-length in seven years, and their sixth overall. It follows 2019's "Wild Gods".
The record was produced by Jeremy Cormitas (SENSES FAIL, CHIODOS), Trae Titus and the band's own guitarist Alexis Pareja, and frontman Jesse Korman frames it as a deliberate refusal to be predictable.
"This is a very honest album," Korman said. "We don't want to live up to what everyone just expects of us, and at this point in our career, we have nothing to lose."
Leading it is "Joy Is A Weapon", a single featuring FOXY SHAZAM that the band's own description files under "salsa death metal" — which tells you roughly how much interest they have in a consistent genre tag. The song is about refusing to let the people who hurt you dictate who you turn into.
"Sometimes the most powerful act of rebellion isn't fighting back," the band said. "It's finding joy any way possible and refusing to be broken."
The twelve tracks swing hard between registers: the chaotic screamo of opener "Trust Chaos", the progressive pop of "Glow In The Dark Skin", the vocal stretch of "Become A Ghost". Korman is unbothered that it does not resolve neatly. "For this album, we wanted to do what THE NUMBER TWELVE LOOKS LIKE YOU does and write something that is just completely unexpected."
His lyrics, as ever, are keyed to the moment they were written in — "Dancing Before The Flood" came out of his response to the COVID pandemic, "Joy Is A Weapon" is an anti-violence piece. "If you just look back at every single album we've made, it's just a timestamp of that time period," he said. "'Howls From The Holographic Heart' is just an extension of that. It's a timestamp of the duration of seven years."
Pareja put the band's position more plainly: "At the end of the day, we really choose our path, and hopefully people enjoy it."
"Howls From The Holographic Heart" track listing:
- Trust Chaos
- Glow In The Dark Skin
- Dancing Before The Flood
- False Face
- Fangs Out
- A Candle Awaits
- Indeciso
- Hard To Be Human
- Volcanic March
- Desire To Expire
- Become A Ghost
- Joy Is A Weapon
Before the album lands, the band take "Mongrel" back out for its 20th anniversary. The tour opens September 25 in San Antonio, Texas, runs through October with KAONASHI, BLIND EQUATION and DIFFERENCES joining in select markets, and closes October 30 at Mahall's in Lakewood, Ohio.
Source: blabbermouth.net