Put on Your Rosy Red Glasses

Originally released in small quantities in 2003, Put On Your Rosy Red Glasses was the debut EP by the New Jersey post-hardcore outfit the Number Twelve Looks Like You. Reissued in 2006 by ECA after the band's profile was considerably raised, the long EP sounds in retrospect like the blueprint for their somewhat experimental form of grindcore. Although there's a little gratuitous shock value -- the track "Document: Grace Budd" is merely a spoken word reading of an infamous confession written by the cannibalistic serial killer Albert Fish in 1934 -- most of the album's lyrics are even more unintelligible than the average grindcore album. The supposed "clean" singer, Justin Pedrick, is only marginally less grunty than the band's resident Cookie Monster, Jesse Korman. Musically, however, this is a better than average grindcore album, with some unexpectedly jazzy and funky turnarounds slipped between the unison-riff assaults and a not-bad acoustic guitar interlude, "Empty Calm," before the epic closer "Civeta Dei." Strictly for fans of the style, but certainly worth a listen for anyone who came to the Number Twelve Looks Like You later in their career.