Episode 54: Botch's "We Are the Romans"

Unfortunately, it's still important and, uh, we need to pull your palate in another direction for fun. Although for spoilers that it will be significantly different than the previous two vibes that we've asked you to get down with.

Although as we'll discuss, I'm sure this is a band that would agitate promoters by consistently saying that they were about to play their last show ever for years and years and years on end. Um, and so even in this moment, it's going to be a little difficult to try to figure out whether that's actually what's happening or not,

The, this is, we've talked about converge. We've talked about me without you, but I would say if there's like a Rosetta stone record, the whole reason we started music grid before Tundig was because of a little band called the chariot that absolutely wouldn't exist without Botch. And I would say the majority of the like center of the Venn diagram of our musical friendship. owes everything to Botch and to this record specifically.

So it's a bit like, any anyone who already probably needs to know knows and then everyone else, why would you even bother going about Convincing them, you know, how do you jump from Ravi Shankar to this?

Where it's like it's so intensely personal and it's so about seeing the niche and whatever but I think there's some really good universal stuff to unpack here that I hope we avoid trafficking in the cliches that so many people have done in talking about This band and this record and what it ostensibly means But I do think there is a fair amount of stuff to take away once you take the cannonball to the gut of the opening sounds of this record.

Initially released in the year two grand, Baja's final full length was slash is the kind of devastating metallic hardcore explosion that the term quote metallic hardcore could slash can only aspire to. In fact, these dudes nailed it so hard that the bands that came after them had to start calling themselves Metalcore out of respect.

even that little synopsis is born of a time that has now passed, but was the moment that we learned about we are noodley hardcore right around this exact time when all of a sudden blogs and threads and thoughts that people were beginning to have about lineages of bands were beginning to be documented on the internet in ways that we could chase down, figure out, learn about, and then download all of.

And I think even that attitude that we heard in that writing used to be the way that a lot of bands would write about themselves and their albums, even in that time, trying to figure out how to give the most kitschy MySpace bio that would cause you to play some tunes and then hop around on similar artists or whatever. But like, it's both that quote itself is a good introduction to this band and this record because it's both in some ways.

manner, factually more or less accurate, and also just like wildly inappropriate tonally. And both of those things just live together with glee, uh, anytime this band pokes its head up.

And that's a theme that kept popping up for me and, you know, if you're under the age of 25 first of all, welcome, crazy that you're listening to this second of all it probably sounds farcical on its face, you know, cause if you grew up in flattened, the flattened cultural context of the internet, like it's, it's almost passe to say like genres are irrelevant or, you know, you know, regional scenes are, or whatever, but I guess rest assured at least that I, an older, pit

retired person have always hated this kind of stuff as a word person, and the like, imagined Berlin Wall between metal people and punk people, and just like, the word metalcore makes me, makes me want to jump in front of a car. Um, And it does such a disservice, like so much of the stuff around this does a disservice to the smartness of a band like Botch and the people in it.

And I think that's where a lot of the pushback and the bristling on the record came from is like, we're outsiders to the world already. That's why we've sought out these venues and these weird sounds. Like why are we doing the same shit inside this room that they're doing out there outside the doors? Like guys, can we, can we take a minute and pause until we can figure out what's going on?

So I, all that to say, no matter what your age, if you're if you're a little bit of an antagonist or a misanthrope, No matter what the sounds do to you when you press play on this record, You can at least start with a posture that there is to appreciate. That's a little different than anything you're going to get anywhere else. Cause it's antagonistic, but it's also smart and self assured. And I think you can sense that in the music.

It's like impossible to separate into any kind of an objective first impression for us at this point. But I, I think I want to ascribe that sort of posture and being able to sense that feeling, connecting to that feeling immediately, tell me more about Botch. paint more of a picture about this band.

Uh, in any degree, but yeah, to this, what you just brought up will keep playing itself out over the history of this band, uh, both in their original active moments and then in the followup since then but they were formed in Tacoma, Washington in 93, which I always really want to impress when we are talking about bands from the nineties who were doing sounds that.

Created new genres 10, 20, and 30 years later, because it's very, very difficult in my opinion, at least I was only one particular age in the 90s, but it's very difficult to imagine this band, Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, making the types of records that they did in a year that started with 19 in it. It, it feels out of time and strange. So it's.

Cool enough to think about how out of left field seeming any of this stuff would be but I have a feeling that it's sort of doubly or triply the feeling that we're getting these days to have experienced it back then. You must have felt like a madman listening to something like this the moment that it came out.

Like it's, it is the grunge moment and they started and were influenced by like more 80s stuff, but the hold that like punk, truly punk culture, uh, and like post punky stuff. almost had on this area is, is like just anthropologically really cool to me. You know, they were all, all fighting back against the rednecks up in that area at the time. It's, it's a culture of a bygone era. It's just, it's so interesting.

So they were already uh, gaining what they would gain as the band Melvins. But for like Botch specifically, it was sort of a double edged sword and you read a lot about this in retrospective now, but.

Effectively, at the time, like, they were seen as not playing especially accessible music, which will not shock a lot of people who may not be familiar with the band, right, but like, the degree to which you become inaccessible when you're already an offshoot of a burgeoning punk scene is, like, An interesting threshold to kind of figure out, like, who, hold on if punk is a whole collective thing where we're sort of saying there's nothing that doesn't belong, who is it that's

all of a sudden making the wall that says Botch is on the other side of it? We, we don't really know, but what we see from Botch in those years is, they were pissed at whoever it was. Whoever defended that wall, they fucking hated them. And so they were consistently sort of being treated as outsiders and then also Made sure to act like outsiders, uh, at every possible chance they could. Made fun of overly serious hardcore and punk scenes.

I mean, there are a million touchstones for all this as we talk about this record and this band. But I mean, everything from the way shows were booked to the way that they made merch and sold merch. The designs of their t shirt. The way that they released records after they broke up as a

You are either at that point making a sincere statement about an obscure piece of music, or you're being intentionally obtuse and playing something that doesn't fit. And like, that's become a normal, expected move. This is the kind of shit that Botch did then. In the 90s, intentionally to like, throw off any vibes of like, overly serious pretension towards what it is that we are about to do.

Which is basically to make well, discordant noise at seemingly random intervals for a really long time with high energy until we're done.

Man, I feel like a woman and everybody's saying along there too. And like

Right at that time you've got Man, here's a real like vignette into my life. We're gonna list off some things that some people will know deeply and other people will go, What in the hell are you talking

Bands were experimenting with finding ways to become technical, but without having to explain the technical complexity of it. They were exploring ways to make complicated music without ever having to have really a rubric for deciphering it on the other end.

It just sort of like, the more you hear about the way Botch wrote this record and then a lot of the other bands who were writing similar music people just got a weird itch and then made it weirder and weirder and weirder and weirder until something had a very odd time signature that felt cool overall and then put that shit on tape. We're done. no one is counting out all the beats to start with and then subdividing them up with intention in a songwriting or composition type manner.

He said, he was like, it was astonishing to me that this song was popular, but like heavy music, that heavy music was popular, but also that it was like the dumbest shit you'd ever heard in your life. I caveat my biscuit fan, whatever. Yeah. But it reminded me also of when we talked about Rated R by Queens, like, you know, my probably favorite record ever. And that was sort of a pushback to Nu Metal as well, and like a sort of a coarsening of the cultural sphere. That that came out in mid 2000.

And then Stankonia by Outkast came out. October of 2000, sort of in response to the narrowing over 10 window of what was acceptable in hip hop music at the time. And so it's really interesting to me that you have this like end of the millennium sort of fear and paranoia about what the next century is going to be. And we squeeze all this juice out of the end of the millennium, like right at the wire.

And that goes for like artists and counterculturists of all stripes and, and punk is like peak counterculture in our opinion. So, I like looking at it through like more of an intersectional lens too, but yeah, holy shit. Just in the heavy music we did 30 or 40 years worth of progress in heavy music and a calendar year, which was awesome.

In 99, the fundamental elements of South Town by P. O. D. came out, and if anyone just responded viscerally to that, mention just for a second, hold on, I'm not saying the whole thing was crazy. What I recalled in that moment, though, was like, South Town, the song, was big. And it's a hardcore song.

And you can take that line further in our other episode if you want. But like, yeah, to your point, like all of a sudden heavy music started finding footings in a bunch of different places. And even though we're maybe projecting this onto it, it does seem like all of a sudden a lot of bands went, nah, I can be weird too. Let's do it. Let's get especially odd. Right. And then we had Behold the Arctopus, which is what happens when you don't let people reel it back in.

I know we've talked about this before in other episodes like with Meshuggah, but like, there was a part of me that connected to music in a new way the first time I ever heard that really particular riff in a really similar way that like 43 percent burnt by Dillinger's skate plan will do it. all of a sudden you realize like something in my body and my psyche loves The way you just did a rhythm

and production and like Things that just had you know stories and thought and complexity for days and years and instead this was like This doesn't feel like that, though, but it's still really cool.

But you know, Hydra Head at that time was putting out, again, Check this list, man, like Isis, Botch, Converge, Coalesce, Boris, Jesu, Kayo Dot, Cave In, like just records on records on records that would become if you just took that list and you took every record from the every band I just mentioned in five seconds you can find Hundreds or thousands of people who are like, that's my favorite record and I love it so much I would die for it.

Like it's an important piece of music to me And in some of these just a handful of record labels were just like putting out things that would you know have all this

Like, Hydra Head, you and I personally owe a lot. And I know, to your point, thousands of people would say the same thing. And like, that kind of an impact is so cool. So cool and seismic.

Type of shift or cause people to see things or experience things differently in such a cool direction. And like Aaron Turner and Jake Bannon, both are people who are like, you just watch them having done things. And you go, Oh my God, like you've created more culture than I'll ever experience in my whole lifetime. Just

Yeah, I knew that was going to make a huge difference I knew I should start hydra head records and put these weird bands out because I knew it would Change the landscape of music Over the coming decades, but it happened because they wanted to and then it did

It's, I would do this if it put me in a tent, and I had to live on the streets to do this. They all, All the guys like that have evolved really beautifully and they're like, there is a mix of pragmatism or whatever that allows them to keep evolving and growing and finding new ways to reach people and connect with people. But I think at the end of the day, it's like, I just want to be around things that I really believe in and I want to make things that I really believe in.

One of the, one of the dudes in Botch in one of the interviews had the quote, you know, I, I'd rather be proud of what I did than rich in my twenties. And they're like all the Hydra headbands. I, there is a sense of pride of like, well, no matter what happened, we made the best and most original stuff we possibly could and didn't cave into a zeitgeist. We tried to find our own voice and, you know, at the end of our lives, that's all we can ask for.

what it's worth was more innovative back in the day than our current, uh, hellscape of music distribution. But, so, Botch recorded a cover of The Wizard, which is just, uh, Unironically, my favorite Black Sabbath song anyway. But they recorded a cover of that, sent sent it to Aaron Turner along with a demo. And now we, uh, now we're going to release a Botched record. Okay. Yeah. Like whatever this band is doing, everybody was on board with.

But like, so many earnest, tiny connections like that are cool and have such a uniqueness to them down to like, The fact that, uh, a Black Sabbath cover would connect these people when, you know, one of the ways that Coalesce got through certain periods of their career was from a Led Zeppelin's cover record. There's just a, you, if you make the mistake, as we go along, of thinking everything here is non serious, you'll miss it.

But if you think everything is serious, you'll miss it too, because it's not. But like, You don't record Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin covers, you don't talk to people in the scene who clearly care about bands and putting out innovative material, unless you, at some particular and personal level, give a deep shit about something that you're doing.

But Botcha's ploy seems to have always been We're never gonna quite let you in on exactly what that means, and your only invitation is to come to a bot show. At which point we'll probably troll you but that's still the only place to get it.

One of the things we talk about is how do you start by taking in a record like this, especially if it's one that you haven't heard before, or you haven't heard in a long time, or isn't generally in your kind of sphere of things you're naturally going to turn on, unless we make you and, I think this one's, this is a really important aspect of music like this, and we sort of talked about it a bit with Meshuggah but, you know, being able to approach this with an open

mind is important but there are some ways I think we can kind of guide your open mind through it as, um, experienced listeners of well, just perversely decadent music I think we can help.

So. To that end, I'd be curious then Kyle, like what either kind of surprises you about this record, thinking about it as someone listening to it for the first time, or like paying a lot of attention to it, uh, as we have in prep here or otherwise like some guidance or context on thinking about this, if it's not normally within your wheelhouse.

There is a lot of hype. There's a lot of cliched writing, which I, you know, have already talked about my disdain for, but this album is enshrined, you know, like you, you mentioned to me before how many places this appears on like best albums of the end of the millennium or whatever. Like they've been called revolutionaries. It, it has a true hall of fame place.

So it's like very easy to throw all that in, into your like goggles before you listen and be like, there's something I'm supposed to get, like a lot of other people get this thing. I need to get it, whatever, whatever happens when I listen, I need to get it and then go to a show and be like, yeah, of course I love Botch. I would do my best to do away with. Any of those preconceived notions and try really hard to listen for the first time.

Even if you have listened to this before, even if you're a Botch fan, like even if you're listening to this episode because you love the band because you saw the reunion tour. If you're in the camp like us we wish we could, I would dare to say, experience the feeling of this record for the first time again. I think there's three things that stand out for me. The first thing is the energy, right?

At the risk of, at the risk of sounding like all the writers that I, I hate talking about this record. The first thing that you're going to notice is like a force of nature feeling right, like immediately first notes right out of the gate, and it's just, it's like downhill skiing on a black diamond or something, or like having a hurricane come directly at your face. Um, and I won't, I promise I won't do any more shitty similes. but like.

To be able, the human ability to be able to bottle a thing like that, that's inside of you and just like throw a lightning bolt with your hand is amazing. And no matter what kind of music you're into or what kind of stuff you like in the world just try to hop on that horse and grab it right away. The second thing is like, there's a lot going on noise wise. But there's a tightness, you, I, I will use an I statement, never doubt the band's control over the chaos for a second.

Frequency Ass Bandit is a really great example of that for me where it like, it can be really choppy and abrupt. But they're, they're in control. They're riding the lightning the whole time. And then similarly, the third thing is, is dynamics and space and tone.

One thing that sets them apart from a lot of their peers of the time was not only the like nirvana, loud, quiet, loud thing that they do so well, and it doesn't feel jarring to go from a loud part to a quiet part but the space they create and the tone that, that like creates a feeling of bigness throughout the record because a lot of it is not recorded in a big Led Zeppelin four kind of way. It's close mic'd, it's tight. You know, there's some DI stuff. Dave's vocals are very tight.

The drums are very tight and dry. It sonically is not necessarily a record that I would think of as big, but there's just like such a torrent of shit coming at you. That the dynamic stuff helps you zoom out and it sort of creates space in the recording.

and I do want to call out like I Speaking for myself, I guess I I don't love the production of this record And I don't think that the reason that most people love this record is because of the production of it but It was a move, and I didn't realize that it was a move until, and we might mention this later, but Norma Jean, we, we covered that, you know, we did an episode on their first record, Bless the Martyr, Kiss the Child.

If that sounded like an ISIS record, the next record they, they had, Oh God, the Aftermath, sounded exactly like a Botch record. And it freaked me out when I heard it the first time because I was kind of looking forward to that record And I didn't understand it and then it didn't take but even back then a pretty quick like Set of googles to quickly understand. Oh matt bales did. Oh, he Oh, this is him, in both places. Now I understand.

This is a very particular way to do hardcore, and it sounds this way on purpose. And, so, I think, trying to avoid

So again, it was a move. He knew what he was doing. They knew what they were doing when they produced this record. is it objectively good? No, probably not. But, but it is, it is intentional. It is deliberate. And it is good. It is good in the way that it wants to be. It's not like there's nothing about it that you hear it and you're like, this sounds like shit. It's, it's dialed into what it is, but it's different.

And we'll probably talk about this some more as well. But like the alternations between what designates a downbeat in this music will send you spinning.

And It's an aspect of what makes you feel off kilter and what makes it feel like it lacks like resolution and things like that it's all kind of working together and doing something interesting that a lot of other music never really tried to do and for me, especially Going back and trying to both remember what it felt like at the time and thinking about it now like it still Shocks me how little any of these songs resolve in a traditional musical sense Period.

Root notes, choruses, payoffs in general, no, no. And it becomes even clearer that that's the case when you listen to bands who were heavily inspired by them and took more melodic directions and turned those into like resolving choruses and things like that. And so to me, this just like continues to kind of stand out as like, it's It was a unified approach to something in particular that is very, very hard to execute unless your brain is already kind of preconceptualizing it.

But if you want to hear what I think first of all, to be even clearer, like there has already been a remaster of this record that came out, which is for the most part, the one you're going to listen to when you're streaming. And I think that got released in 2006 or 2007, something like that, maybe.

And yeah 2007 and so that's already improving for sure but then The two minutes to late night guys did a cover of to our friends in the great white north and curbaloo's playing guitar on it and Presumably had something to do with maybe the production or how some of that sounds and I thought it gave an interesting um insight into how would a whole bunch of people who definitely respect what was being done on this record treat the first song from this record?

Like the most recognizable sound in some hardcore sub genres at all is the beginning of this record. And so it was an interesting bit to listen to there, but to your point, like you can even see that Even though I feel like I can tell some tonal differences, especially maybe in drums and things like that, they are still trying to achieve that same unified sharpness that would come down with angular guitar riffs and vocals happening all at the same time.

So it's a fun thing to experiment with and think about. So that, that continues to catch me off guard a little bit these days as I think about and listen to it. But being less of a fucking dork for a second, uh, you know, we, uh, we talk a lot about the, uh, everything's in four, four, if you're not a huge dork challenge I want you to kind of apply it here, especially if you are someone who's new to this record or doesn't listen to a lot of music like this, if you have trouble, like latching in.

Just go straight to transitions from persona to object in the very beginning. It is five beats over four beats And then every 20 beats, these two things come together. If you'll just kind of sit with that part of that song for a second and try to count out those notes and hear it, maybe, not for everybody, but maybe, some people it will like, click in. You'll find out there's like a codex to this thing in a lot of the cases that makes you, like, it's what makes the hook worth it.

In a lot of these records is because once you get where that downbeat is you hear it differently And then you're locked in

It's definitely not Polyphia or one of those bands where it's like the math is the point and it's like it's this and then it's this and I went to berkeley and

It's, there's like a core Botch thing, which is interesting because it's one of their weirder songs. It's not like a Botch fastball. It's a Botch change up. Ha ha

And then it starts to get to several places and he's like, I don't know what they did. I don't know. I don't know. And it, but he kept, it was this cycle, which I think is a cycle that's worth having for people maybe listening to this for the first time, which is like, that didn't make any sense, but it wasn't wrong. That didn't make any sense, but it wasn't wrong. Hold on. Okay. That did. Okay. I don't understand what happened.

It feels random, but at the same time, it works if I keep in here and listen to the next thing that it's connecting to you.

So it was cool to watch that guy with bots where he was like, it's so weird. And so we're like, what? Yeah, it's gratifying. You know, there's something there, but structurally, you don't necessarily know what it is.

As a spoiler, soon we will talk about C. Thomas Howell as the soul man, the title of the song, and how How hilarious it is that that is the song title, and how it is not as serious as you think it is once you figure out why it's hilarious. It's all amazing. But, one quote that's great was, The point of Botch was as Tim always put it, apparently Keep it in a weird time signature so when they're banging their heads, they're banging them on the wrong beat.

And it's like a Okay, that can actually help me kind of figure this out. And you would see then from all the bands that these folks would go on to make, because this was actually their last studio record because apparently they didn't get along super well.

But like, they would go on to, you got Minus the Bear and Russian Circles and These Arms are Snakes, uh, and Roy, which is a, a definite fun offshoot but like, they would always continue to play with weird time signatures in a lot of those other bands, but specifically within Botch, like, it was very antagonistic intentionally from the perspective of, of the actual rhythm. And then the guitarists were.

I found reading about it fascinating, especially reading it now and hearing it from grown adults thinking about how they played guitar, 20 years ago or 25 years ago, and hearing them basically talk about, like, the thought that they put into it was, Well, we want it to be more complex than our last record because we were kind of just fucking around with one finger drop detuning chord things then So we wanted it to be more complicated than that But at the

same time anything kind of beyond that no like they weren't thinking harder. It was more just like I want to play it differently than I played it last time and I need it to be weird and mash up with all the weird stuff that we're doing, uh, so that it's like, you know, sharp and angular and that's going to sound right. There's no grand scheme.

Uh, there's no like magical complex music theory approach to how the stuff was written which I think makes it all the more fascinating that it came out this way at all.

And they booked some studio time and just so happened, I don't know, cos call it cosmic whatever, to have a really fruitful writing phase. NSO took two years to write. And then Romans came out in less than six months The thing that I love that they said about it just as a self professed creative, they said it was a flurry of creative activity.

And it was almost like one of those things where once we'd given ourselves a few parameters, once we'd established that we were not going to do standard palm muted mosh parts, just cutting that completely out. So then it's, what can we do? That's way more satisfying than that. So by creating boundaries and limitations, it opened things up for us. Made us think a little more aggressively and thinking outside the box made things a lot more exciting.

Doing things like looping guitar parts and transitions from persona to object. We were by no means the first band to come up with that. You can listen to Self Pity by No Means No from 1981 and they do a very similar thing in that song. But for us, that kind of musical technique was uncharted territory and super exciting.

I love One of my favorite creative exercises is more constraints, like even within the context of this podcast, going from what do you want to talk about into, context, what to do on first listen, uh, what to think about influence, just, Just like three, three or four really specific things has been really liberating too. So like any, anybody who's looking to try to do anything new impose a limitation. What can I do in 24 hours?

That's why I love, I've mentioned it before the Brian Eno card deck. Oblique strategies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I love it so much imposing a limitation or a dimension or whatever. Just like, push the physics of your imagination, of your creative being, in a direction. And they were definitely doing that here.

That also motivated aspects of what they did, specifically with like, we mentioned they were sort of immediately antagonistic towards and from the scene itself that they were maybe attached to. But they also had a really, they were really hot on this thing back then, and then they still talk about it now, where One of the things they were respec Repelling so strongly against That punk had And, and Hardcore had tried to become self serious in a way that made them really uncomfortable.

And they have, I mean, they're, they're on record in a number of places, and I don't just mean musically, they're on record in interviews basically being like, we hate the band Race Trader and everyone else who's like them, who was at that time, like a band who you like. It's pretty easy to go back and, and find the edges that Botcha's pointing at and saying that's stupid now.

But like, you could also see and empathize how bands and movements like that emerge from punk and hardcore scenes where people People care people care about a lot of stuff. That's we talk endlessly about people who are kind of outside of that scene or who have never come into it for a moment just to look around. It comes across as some sort of like, aggressive.

Nihilistic anti community thing when really the only thing that's right about that is it's nihilistic But in a way where we take care of each other and we care about things really deeply and we yell about them Until they go away or we keep yelling and like so Seeing bands respond so early and so harshly to the idea that you needed to become very very serious if you're going to become a punk or a hardcore aficionado who cared about politics and things like that was Part

of what played into, not only their whole vibe, but really specifically, songs here, including the song See Thomas Howell as the Soul Man, which basically has lyrics, which, maybe we can talk about this if we need to on this episode, but, even when you talk to the vocalist about the lyrics he wrote, he's not super like, these are important, and I thought a lot about them. It's pretty much nope, I wrote them at the last minute. I'm a terrible procrastinator.

And, they themselves would go on to inspire decades of vocalists who then would just say vague, obtuse phrases, uh, over and over on top of riffs and it became vocaling. But here in this song, part of the vocals were basically piping in this message where they painted really specific other bands in portions of the scene. But an extremely Botch vignette of this whole thing, right? C. Thomas Howell was a person, a human being. Is a person? I'm not actually sure at this moment.

Okay. So they're pointing at specific bands saying don't put on an act of self seriousness in order to elevate yourself above other people because all you're really doing is reinforcing the systems of oppression that you're trying to rebel against. And you can write this whole story about how genius it is that they ended up, titling the song like this and how it highlights something so maybe insightful about their perspective.

When actually they ended up naming it that because there were tapping parts on the guitar in the song. So they started calling it Taps, and they thought C. Thomas Howell was in the movie Taps. So they started calling the song C. Thomas Howell, but then they realized he wasn't in TAPS, but he was in Soulman, so the title of the song is C. Thomas Howell as the Soulman.

Um, the atrocity exhibition as inspiring themes of the human body as a landscape and the way that culture and entertainment sort of dictates the human body and vice versa. So Brian cook very much a cerebral core of the band. Um, we'll, I'll talk a little more about him later anyway, on man, the ramparts. The line, we are the Romans Brian thought would make a great title, but Dave thought it was a totally silly gladiator song because the riff is kind of huge.

So he was thinking about chariots and fire and stuff like that. And it sounded like I pulled the words out of Conan, the barbarian, but then. We in the band started talking about the social decline of Western civilization and how Americans are the new Romans, it's all slaves and Caesars. So we made it work. And then Brian said, I don't think Dave was originally trying to make some grandiose statement. I think he was just singing about Romans and using all of this cheesy medieval imagery.

At the time, it seemed like sort of a joke, but when we went into the studio and actually finalized everything, it actually kind of worked as a metaphor for America as an empire and decline. So if you're looking around the scene and you see all these self serious shitheads, And you look at the larger world, and Nookie's playing every 30 minutes. And, everybody's falling for the saxophone playing dipshit in the White House who's doing war crimes. Uh, and criminalizing poverty.

Then, of course, a little bit, you're gonna, you're gonna be like, I don't care! Unbuckle me from that rollercoaster! Until you lock into something really interesting, and then you're like, Oh, no, wait. Hold on, actually,

And then I listened to an offhanded other podcast episode where two people in Australia were talking about this record. And this, uh, the, the woman who was being interviewed, um, Had listened to this record a lot after not really being exposed to it and was sort of talking about her experience with it Very interesting premise for our podcast Um having comedians listen to seminal hardcore records and then be like, what did you think about that? Be funny Was really fun. But she was basically

same time And I think There's something unique that I have no good explanation for about this record and in some other ones. In fact, actually the Chariot record you just mentioned is like this for me. They cross some sort of threshold where they go from becoming a super energizing thing to me, to becoming more of a like relaxed locked in thing and I tend to I really enjoy this record doing much calmer things than I normally would integrate this type of music into.

And I, I don't know why, but something about it feels different. Uh, and I wanted to at least say it out loud so that if someone else had a similar experience, you could try it too. Cause like, doesn't feel like a put this on and chill at the pool type record. And yet I have a feeling that would work pretty well. And I don't know why.

I think it's I also don't like it for things like going for a run, or trying to exercise, or like getting pumped up, or anything like that, and I think it's because there's so much like falling apart happening, you know, you can't, you can't build too much momentum because then the train will, fall off the rails or something like that. I got to feel like it's, it's something around the way that they designed it to like, not be locked into one thing.

Um, and, and the second you want it to be one thing, it's not that anymore, but if you can just like absorb it and appreciate the multitudes of it for what it is, It like makes you feel more present, it's like, uh, it's like walking around the High Museum with really bright lights on and all the art looks a little different in the collection, but like, you really want to be, you're pumped to be there, but you have more of a like sustained soul chakra thing than just

like a lot of energy to do a lot of Red Bull energy to be exercising or whatever. I don't know,

And I I've always seen those building blocks as the way you get to being a better and better band because you can just string together more time more smartly. And maybe there's, Maybe it's less party and more songy than I give it credit for, but it seems like the way the dudes in the band talk about it, you know, this being only their second full length record that they're trying a bunch of stuff and seeing what works.

And they're trying fragments, you know, fragments add up into like a movement or whatever. But I think the record, I love the record because it's full of moments that 20 plus years on still make me go totally feral. Yeah. It's underpinned by Dave's vocals. I don't think Dave doesn't get enough credit as like one of the best vocalists in the history of, of the genre or the approach. Everyone's really at the top of their game on this record.

Great drums, great bass, obviously killer guitar, but Dave's vocals, there's the perfect amount of rawness in the capture and like just some delicate distortion applied. So I think throughout vocals are a cool thing to focus on and isolate. And then here. how much of the vocal and lyrical styling is clearly influential on stuff that came after it. But starting in the first song it's got a move that you and I have always loved to the point of joking and laughing about.

There's a cymbal ping, just a boom, and then they go into the last rip. Yeah the ting you and I and our buddy Stuart Roan used to comment on the ting and how we would, we would look out for that move in bands. And that was like, that was a signal. That was a That was a conch shell to lose your shit in the pit, just like a real quick move. So I love it when I hear it. And I, I didn't realize that this had those in there, but like such a signature move, love it.

Then you go into Mondrian that's got. A weird count, but it always hits. I think it's the first time also that I really noticed Brian Cook's bass tone. He does a really like gnarly, nasty, gritty but cool, tuneful, melodic bass tone. And then you get to about a minute 15 and they do that big atonal chord in a groove that again has been ripped off a million times since. And then about a minute later. They go into a groove, a sort of Latin groove. And I think the demo.

For this one was called Latin song, or one of the demos was called Latin song. I want to say it was this one, but there is a groove. That's great. If, if you are on Tik TOK and you love the way people are doing like Bachata dances to knock loose suffocate there's a little cool rhythm stuff happening there. We've talked about transitions at length. You can obviously see where the guitar here evolved into minus the bear and shout out to our boy, John Asante, who's a long time, minus the bear fan.

And he and I, I like. parallel pathed our way in college into being like, Oh, we both love Dave Knudsen's guitar in really, really separate contexts. He got, he got me into Minus the Bear because he was like the guy from Botches in this band. Initially I was like, I don't know what this goofy shit is. but I really, really loved them and they became a band that I, I love a lot. So there's some really cool mathy tappy parts.

And then he does a crazy like robot death rattle solo with some sick pedal work at at about five minutes into the song, then, uh, channel channel sort of interlude thing shows how good they are with space. We talked about dynamics earlier in the episode. They like oscillate through dynamics really naturally. And then if I, if I recall correctly, there's some like recorded.

Audio like an audio segment or fragment that they work in which became sort of a staple or a cliche in the genre c thomas howell we talked about the what they call the ending the the big huge chord part which is actually like two thirds of the song starting at about a minute and a half it's the ascending bass notes and the guitar taps with delay that goes into Sort of big triumphant part and everyone in the band was quick to be like, yeah, Brian came up with that chord progression.

He's great at writing those things. So like the fact that that song is so resonant with their fans, partly because it's a, it's a fuck you song to other bands in the scene. And partly because it's just like, kind of got a cool triumphant energy. A lot of that comes from Brian cook. Then a little later on, or I guess right after C Thomas Howell is St. Matthew returns. I, I called this the Limp Bizkit clunk splat note, which I know is just a helmet thing.

It's just a, like everybody flattens out into a really dissonant low end thing. But when they all hit it to your point, the downbeat thing, I think St. Matthew is where you can really hear the downbeat because it sounds like Wile E. Coyote splatting onto the pavement from great heights. I, that's like my favorite aspect of that song. And then I was like, is there a guest vocalist on this punk style? But it's just Brian cook. It's so different than Dave.

That I was like, this somebody from another band. I don't, you know, maybe they got, um, maybe they got somebody from a, from a band that they like, but it's just Brian Cook. Not just, but it's not Dave. And then in, uh, in frequency ass bandit the super ripped off move, is it three minutes? The, the panic chords, the meh, meh, meh, meh, going into then like a super fast chug part with.

Like repeated lyrics that make you want to jump up on somebody's shoulders and scream it directly into the mic like it That is it's like the part of all parts in this like smart hardcore music and the lyrics are Who holds my fate in their hands? Not you after the refrain of who holds my fate all the lyrics, all the breakdown lyrics that I've ever loved in hardcore. Um, and I know this is cause we grew up in the South around like the pseudo Christian bands and whatever.

They have a little bit of a like biblical apocalyptic thing to them. You know, there's a little bit of a literary reference. It's a little bit biblical. It's a little bit probably more cerebral than like a throwdown or hate breed type thing. And frequency is an example. That I, I look too often in terms of like a, a good smart, but not too smart for no reason refrain.

And then you go into man, the ramparts and there's the refrain of we are the Romans and just the huge big chord that starts and repeats throughout man, the ramparts is. is sick. It's a great, huge, I love a huge album closer. I love it when bands go out on their biggest note. And they certainly do here.

and they work much better in the context of each other than isolated and other bands tried to take them and like make them their thing but it's it's just 45 minutes of pretty singular moments that they mash together in really dynamic ways it's a it's just a like a shit ton of one and one make three just for a long time over and over very very alchemic in that way

If something in this connects with you, welcome. Welcome. You, you are a person like us, and we welcome you. We don't know what that means either, but we welcome you. And, you, especially if you're new to this journey, there is, I have good news for you, you will never run out of music. So, not only other Botch stuff, yes, but also, Isis, Coalesce, Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan, the Blood Brothers. Okay, all bands who Like, we're not even talking yet about bands who were inspired by them.

We're just talking about bands that existed at the same time as them, and were connected to a similar zeitgeist, uh, and went in different directions. And, you know, we mentioned we mentioned a few episodes we've done. We also did a Converge episode in the past, so, we'd encourage you to check that one out. We love Converge. Both of us just love it. Undyingly but all those are bands that were sort of doing really similar when I say similar, I mean similarly

If you really, really like the sound of vocals in hardcore, you get A lot of what you get in Botched, but with a frontman who was scary and large and approached the whole thing really differently, right? Whereas, like, Converge, as we talked about killer frontman there, obviously, but the approach is very different. They are making singular noise it is intentionally Not complex, but intentionally, I mean composed they are very smart.

They're doing a lot of things on purpose um, whereas on the other hand like, you know, we mentioned the blood brothers like that's that's going to be in the we are endlessly antagonistic Direction of things right like I like the blood brothers, but it's not the same type of experience you get listening to this record so They're just like, and I mentioned earlier, Candiria 2 was another band that was around during this time doing really similar stuff.

And that was the sort of, for me, that was the handful of bands that I discovered all at one time and went, Well, fuck. I like all of this now, and this is who I am. Related to that, then, are bands that resulted from these people being in Botched to begin with. So, these arms are snakes, minus the bear, which you mentioned. Russian circles, sumac. Again, all very different bands, actually. Especially in that group, that's really fascinating. Minus the bear is the standout from

Um, sumac though, in particular, I'm thinking like Aaron Turner is in that band. So obviously that's cool. But Nick what's his face from Baptist is the drummer and Nick is like one of the Dave Grohl posted a Baptist live video because he was like, this is one of the best fucking drummers I've ever seen in my life. And. For the few on the proud who knew and saw Baptist, they were like, Oh my God, they were different and they were good.

And they, and then they get over into the converge side of things because they were a God city recorded band. So like between Hydra head and death wish God city converge, you know, but between the Botch guys on the West coast and the converge guys on the East all the good heavy stuff ever of the past 25 years has a root on this tree somewhere.

The other part of that being Matt Bayless, who, engineered this record, was briefly in Minus the Bear, produced a lot of other stuff, like you, you mentioned him earlier. Uh, the big ones for me, though, are those seminal first three Mastodon records Remission, Leviathan, and Blood Mountain that like, if you were coming of age and having music in the early and mid 2000s. Those are still like, titanic, smart, oh my god, heavy music is breaking into exciting new places type music.

Um, and he was at the helm of the truckers as well. I sent

That's where he cut his teeth after Nashville. He was an assistant on Around the Fur, The Deaf Tones. He's, uh, seen it all, done it all so there's, there's a lot just to go, if you go down the Matt Bayliss rabbit hole by itself that's enough for quite a while,

Similarly, I mean that, first of all, just the two directions we just gave you will, you know, Take you the rest of your life anyway, but other ones to add into the mix um, we mentioned earlier like melvins were effectively a A bit of a forebearer forebearer godfathers of the scene type deal but close enough to kind of be considered peers I think on top of the other bands we talked about both melvins and harvey milk and those two bands's Influence and impact in a

similar time frame in a similar moment

There's not enough of that kind of stuff because it's very hard to do well and smartly and not be like a hack, um, but those are a handful of bands that are exceptional because they, they toe a line very delicately and humorously and the music is like inarguably great in my opinion.

And like he said, I can't overstate his influence enough, but he's also into stuff like Stars of the Lids, Silver Jews, Jackson C. Frank, like folkier stuff. He has like kind of folk solo side project. But he's been a role model of continuing to stretch and evolve as like a, an aging punk. On a meta level I have appreciated and taken cues from a lot over the past 10, 15 years.

He also writes on Tumblr about his record collection, like literally every record that he owns, adding up into the hundreds, which I think is a psychotic and very cool and a labor of love that I would absolutely have done In a previous dimension, like 20 year old me would have taken that on and done about the first 500. And then I've been like, this is horrible. Why am I doing this? And then he's, he's just very eloquent. Like he writes for a lot of bands for like reissues and, and stuff.

And there's a great interview with him on machine music where he, he talks about evolving and inspiration and like trying to be timeless instead of tapping into the zeitgeist. He talks about the band Fugazi and, and how they were a good. Template for him. He, he said stuff like they set a very high bar as to how bands should conduct themselves. And I think a part of growing up is realizing that only Fugazi can be Fugazi.

Only Fugazi had the leverage and the power to do the kind of things they did. They don't necessarily need to be rule makers, you know? So I think one of the great things, talking about the serious, unserious dynamic of Botch, it's like, Never get boxed into your own, like the point was to get out of the box. So never put yourself in your own box. And that was what made Botch, I guess, like hard or harder to appreciate widely in their time.

But it's the best lesson that you can take from the band too, is like constantly be out running the box that you inadvertently accidentally put yourselves in. Just by, by like time and repetition. So that's why I'll always love and respect the band because they, they left behind a good template. And I mean, like they, they blew themselves up at exactly the moment where things started to happen.

And I'm a big believer in things only being good because they end or because you know, they're gonna And like never overstaying your welcome, never playing the chorus too many times, never being Metallica and being like, well, I like these parts. Let's do them for eight minutes. Like always under say you're welcome and leave them wanting more. And never, never let them guess your next move. If they can guess your next move, you've already lost the war a little bit.

That's music gives you Eternity in itself, so that's always good enough, but a lot of times like music compels you towards something else. And we, I'm going to channel some energy from, we did a series of podcast episodes called Friday Heavy. And we spent a lot of time talking about artists in closer to the scene and particularly ones who are active releasing records and touring. And so when I want to encourage you, and I bet Kyle will agree.

When, I want to encourage you about what to do when a band exists in that moment and you like them and they're doing something good. Please go to them and give them your money and support them now. Now. Not because it's all panicky or terrible, but simply because bands are very, very hard things to keep together. Even when they're doing monumentally huge things to an art.

We have to as much as we can capitalize on moments where you are humanly available and a band that's really good is coming through your town or somewhere nearby and they're going to play a show and like that show matters and adds up into the Big Lego piece that comprises their career, and you simply do not know how long a band is gonna last, you don't know what will ha I mean, even Power Trip is an example, man, like, everyone who got a chance to see, who could've seen Power Trip, before

Riley Gale died and did it, regrets it, endlessly, every day, and like, that's because you could've been a part of something and you could've supported it, when all those human beings were there to receive that from you, and like, It doesn't have to be super important or deep or spiritual necessarily, but just like we're encouraging you when a band is available and they're playing shows and you're connecting with it, find a way to be a part of it in that moment

because you're going to get something out of that, that you're never going to be able to go back and get later when you're just listening to it.

What's going to get me off my ass to make the drive to go see the show. It's that well, it could be over tomorrow. Like this band could implode. Two is in spite of the odds, the scene is really healthy right now. We are experiencing a moment in heavy music. Um, so like all the openers from Botches reunion are good fodder. Like go look.

Every single one of them up and go check them out, but like scowl gel Zulu Pest control like I could name a gazillion who we've either seen sometime this year or we will see later this year at Furnace Fest or something else. It's an absolutely incredible time. Like the Gen Z kids are straight up killing it. So if you want to feel like you are part of a moment, this is the time to do it. Go to shows, go check stuff out, go to your local watering holes and watch bands and support them.

There, there are a hundred more coming up that are inspired by those bands. That like we don't even know about. So be part of it, be different than a, a generation or two ago where like you have a little more capital now, if you've got a little extra scratch to give them, be a, be a supporter, be a godfather or godmother or god person of the scene. Be a person who helps, helps the ecosystem flourish.

But for me, one thing that this reminds me of, because sort of, if you can imagine the music in this record as a bit of like a physical structure, it There's more going on inside of it than anyone sort of actively detects in the moment. And I mean something more specific than just, It's greater than the sum of its parts. Not necessarily. It's not an equation. Like, it's not linear, in that it's more or less. It's different every time you listen to it.

You pick up something different or a different feel, sort of every time you interact with it. And for me, I often feel like a person who has more going on inside than the container on my outside shows to anybody else. I, I feel like a person made up of a million polyrhythms and time signatures that aren't intentional, but they are me. And they're what I'm experiencing, and frankly, I'm just riffing on them.

I'm just trying to find something interesting and do something a little bit different and see if this, like, entertains me or gives me energy in life. And like, Something about knowing that this music exists and how people connect with it and how they talk about it Motivates me in a really strange way to just be more of myself I actually don't have to explain it.

There doesn't need to be a thesis on the cover and Honestly, just like this band just like someone is listening to this album or this episode right now going nope And you know what? That's fine You don't have to get it, but if you do, there's something that unlocks that feels exponential.

The ability to have more to pay attention to than you have attention to pay is a feeling, and it comes up for me a lot, listening to We Are the Romans and the other records that this inspired, and like, I hope that if that thought connects with somebody that that gives you energy the next time you listen to this record and that it reminds you that being weird and playing it by ear as you go along because you trust yourself and you understand that you're making something

that other people don't have to approve of, get some fucking energy from this man. This is a, a perfect encapsulation of what we're capable of as people. If we'll just. Stop thinking about it so much and stop trying to explain it and go. And you've taught me, Kyle, more about that than anyone else, probably.

Don't let the world flatten you and the people and thoughts and things around you that are, that are beautiful and cool and and as of yet, unwritten, like push, push back against the world, kick against the pricks and be the boy band of your dreams.