by Stewart Mason
An ineffectual combination of math rock and grindcore, the Number Twelve Looks Like You's full-length debut is even more irritating than their pretentiously meaningless band name. The songs function like Burroughs-ian cut-ups, shifting helter-skelter between time signatures and tempos so awkwardly that the resulting songs sound like someone threw a bunch of rehearsal tape shards on the ground and then edited them back together willy-nilly. That description makes it sound much more intriguing than the album actually is, however; for all the random stylistic and arrangement shifts, the base materials are simply the same post-hardcore and emo riffs that hundreds of other, better, bands have already run into the ground. And that doesn't even begin to address the problem of mono-named singer Jase, who may well be the single most annoying singer of the current underground scene. Ever hear a small yappy dog whose tail someone has accidentally stepped on? Translate that incoherent, hyperactive shrillness into human speech and that only begins to describe how completely irritating and obnoxious this guy's voice is. Only the most indiscriminate underground hipster kid could even pretend not to find Nuclear. Sad. Nuclear. a complete waste of time.