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Botch

We Are The Romans

Written by: PP on 02/03/2024 15:42:03

Botch only ever released two full-length albums. The first one, "American Nervoso" was a genuine wow-moment as it transformed our understanding of what was possible with the -core genres and metallic, heavy music in general. Its follow-up, "We Are The Romans" was released one and a half years later and has since become a cult classic given that it essentially birthed mathcore as a subgenre.

It's more avant-garde and experimental than its chaotic predecessor, exploring ambient soundscapes and slower, more methodological approaches to creeping atmospheres (see "Swimming The Channel Vs. Driving The Chunnel" and "Man The Rampart", for instance), yet simultaneously even more discordant and jangly ("Mondrian Was A Liar" or "Transitions From Persona To Object"). The guitars are crazily angular and driven by odd time signatures, resulting in a complex, challenging listen from the get-go.

Bands like Since By Man" were heavily influenced by their screeching distortion, and you can easily imagine a young Keith Buckley having listened to a track like "To Our Friends In The Great White North" in his youth, turning that energy into the rowdy and unparallelled chaos that constitutes albums like "New Junk Aesthetic" and "Radical".

It's an abrasive style of metallic hardcore that's constantly broken by its ferocious breakdowns and tempo-switches, and swirling guitars with virtuoso-like fretwork delivered through brutally heavy distortion, all the while vocalist Dave Verellen screams his throat dead in his signature-style coarse roar.

When comparing the two records, "American Nervoso" strikes me as the better one of the two. The songs have more urgency and immediacy, and the record just sounds like utter chaos from start to finish in the best way. "We Are The Romans" is a much more mature opus in contrast, concentrating on exploring all the sonic possibilities within the realm of mathcore, and as such feels more like an art piece. It comes at the cost of some of that raw intensity of the debut, but rewards the listener through depth-laden, intricate soundscapes that range from the ambitious ("Man The Rampart") to the sledgehammer-style havoc on "Frequency Ass Bandit". Still, it is this record that is most often quoted as the most influential one, even if it was grossly underappreciated at the time of its release.

Download: Saint Matthews Returns To The Womb, To Our Friends In The Great White North, C. Thomas Howell As The "Soul Man", Mondrian Was A Liar
For the fans of: Since By Man, Every Time I Die, The Chariot, The Dillinger Escape Plan
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Release date 02.11.1999
Hydra Head Records