Botch

We Are the Romans (Hydra Head)
by Tim Den

Noisecore doesn’t get any better than this. Not even the classic Deadguy/Kiss It Goodbye stuff. Botch makes spazzing-out on record feel like a live show in your stereo. I’m melting from this, physically and mentally. Absolutely beautiful craftsmanship. The controlled chaos is only paralleled by the Big Bang creating existence. Crisp to the point where every atonal pull-off can be heard deep in the slaughtering of notes. Spinning “C. Thomas Howell as the ‘Soul Man’,” “Saint Matthews Returns to the Womb,” and “Frequency Ass Bandits” is like getting shot in the chest by three exquisitely hand-crafted rifles. Or like a third degree rugburn from a night of intense dry-humping. It gives you so much pain, but accomplishes it with such beauty that you don’t mind the stripping of your dignity (and/or life). The band’s obvious knack for music theory creeps up everywhere in divine, inventive ways (“Transitions From Persona to Object” and especially the ride-to-hell-and-back “Swimming the Channel vs. Driving the Chunnel”). This is unparrelled charisma mixed with mathematical timing and calculus proportions, the explosive melodrama of a special-effects movie, and an over-the-top intensity that carries the already incredible song craftsmanship well beyond the norm. Noisecore doesn’t need anymore bands now that it has Botch. The Jesus Lizard would’ve been proud to call these guys godchildren, since no one else comes close to their level of intensity. Buy this. See this band. Kiss their feet. Give them head.
(www.hydrahead.com)