The Number Twelve Looks Like You Announce First Album in a Decade

Hear "Ruin the Smile" from the upcoming LP 'Wild Gods'

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Jul 15, 2019

After officially returning from hiatus in 2016, the Number Twelve Looks Like You have now announced their first new album in a decade.

Titled Wild Gods, the latest from the New Jersey outfit will arrive September 20 through Overlord Music. Ten tracks in length, the album is said to find the band as "an evolved, supercharged version of its former self" and follows 2009's Worse Than Alone

Wild Gods marks the Number Twelve Looks Like You's first album with new members DJ Scully (bass) and Michael Kadnar (drums), who joined original members Korman and Pareja upon the band returning to action in 2016.

"The band ended somewhat abruptly. We all just needed a break from one another," frontman and founder Jesse Korman explained in a press release. "So as the years went on, [guitarist Alexis Pareja] and I felt like we never got to write some songs that we knew had to be written — that next sound, that next wild record that would push us even more out of our comfort zones and into new waters. We had built such a foundation, such an amazing following, and before we got too old, we knew we should give this one more big shot. To really make a statement for the world to remember us by."

Korman explained that the album's lyrical themes position himself as "a deranged ringleader to this planet, telling the extraterrestrials to come see and hear all about it, to come see the Wild Gods."

He expanded on the theme as follows:

In the past my lyrics were stories that personally happened to me. It would either be about some experience I went through or something I just simply observed and had to speak about. After we disbanded, I always said that if I had a platform like Number Twelve again, I would speak for others and help tell their stories. Which is what I did. This album is like a galactic freak show advertisement to aliens, telling them to come see this insane place we call Earth. On Earth, there are stories that are so out there, you would think they were made up. But no, this is what happens here on Earth. We have everything from priests who molest children, and churches that cover it up, to men thinking they are superior to women, to people killing wild animals with military grade weapons and calling it a sport.​

A first single from the record arrives with "Ruin the Smile," which you can hear below.

Of the album's musical direction, guitarist Pareja offered, "The intention here was to create an unexpected journey through atmospheres that make the listener reflect on the tension and release that each song is putting forth while maintaining a connecting thread. Our goal was to find a balance where we were not repeating ourselves, yet staying true to an essence of what the band had achieved in the past."

Wild Gods:

1. Gallery of Thrills
2. Last Laughter
3. Ruin the Smile
4. Ease My Siamese
5. Sword Swallower
6. Raised and Erased
7. Tombo's Wound
8. Of Fear
9. Interspecies
10. Rise Up Mountain

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