A few weeks back, I happened upon an old interview with god rock timber Creed on MTV2. After suffering through bible-thumper extraordinaire and vocalist Scott Stapp waxing rhapsodic on Matthew 3:12 and its significance in contemporary media, Stapp was asked how the band felt about Radiohead. "Yes, we are definitely Radiohead fans. When interviewers ask you what your favorite band is, Radiohead is a really good thing to say to them."
As a general guideline, I try to avoid reviews before I've fully absorbed an album. In the case of the new Botch EP, however, ignoring the swell of overwhelming praise from my cluster of devoted intellimetal friends proved impossible. I'd heard so much hyperbole from armchair reviewers on the quality of * An Anthology of Dead Ends * that I quickly pushed it to the front of my Pitchfork priorities list. Little did I know that I'd already heard all of these songs before and, surprisingly, from shittier mainstream bands with less indie cred.
As I sat down to draft this review, I had a startling revelation: Botch, Isis, Converge, the Dillinger Escape Plan, Cave In, and most of the Hydra Head crew, while not on a commercial par with Radiohead by any means, are names typically dropped because they sound good to the fairweather metal fan: hard rock that's loud, brash, and angry, but without any of those nasty Satanism questions from your folks.
In case they've managed to fly under your radar for the past nine years, Botch was a four-piece hardcore-metal meld out of Seattle with guitarist David Knudson, vocalist Dave Verellen, drummer Tim Latona, and bassist Brian Cook. Botch released two fantastic metalcore albums in 1999 and 2000 entitled * American Nervoso * and * We Are the Romans * , respectively. Both albums pushed mathematical metal to a wider audience, crafting dense walls of sound with off-kilter rhythms and snarling vocals in a more accessible manner than their Hydra Head counterparts. Through jilted tempos, filthy riffs, and even an improbable cover of "Rock Lobster", Botch carved out a solid niche with a loyal fanbase.
Picking up my copy of * An Anthology of a Dead End * , my attention was immediately drawn to the track titles: "Spaim", "Japam", "Framce", "Vietmam", "Afghamistam", and "Micaragua"-- the kind of nursery school cipher that might have come from a book on combinations and permutations authored by Richard Scarry. Opening with a 14-second guitar intro, "Spaim" signals Botch's entrance to a professional downward spiral that concludes with a fiery crash into a mountain twenty minutes later. Where the Dillinger Escape Plan at least hinted at the possibility of a creative future with their four-track EP, * Irony is a Dead Scene * , earlier this year, Botch opted for a series of safe plays to close out their career in the least offensive, and more importantly, least memorable way possible. Make no mistake, * Anthology * is undoubtedly a hardcore album; despite a handful of prodigious flashes, this is math-metal for kids on the short bus.
All the middle-class, white-male posturing and angst is very much in place but minus the intrigue. "Japam" is short attention span theatre at its worst, crashing through a number of uninspired chord changes between hardcore and lazy pulse with violent wails, churning pop punk riffs, and insipid drums. It's all so predictable that one could train the ear to identify this supposed experimentation as Botch's brand of verse/chorus/verse. Sure, it's all negative, ominous, and assuredly very angry but where's the weenie? Guess what-- there isn't one. Spend two minutes with the first actual song on the disc and you've got a master's understanding of all the tricks and textural and temporal variation present on * An Anthology of Dead Ends * .
"Framce" and "Vietmam" are the two closest approximations to Botch circa 2000. While the desire to embrace conventionality is still present, it's handled in a more organic way. In the case of "Vietmam", the methodical approach pays off. Through a poetic mechanism of guitar and bass, the track plods ahead with far more minimal orchestration and greater flexibility. Strong colors, harmonizing riffs, false starts, false stops, and taste abound, elements sorely lacking on most of * Anthology * . Knudson's guitar work is liquid and naturalistic while Cook and Latona move solidly through an unorthodox cadence with ease and intricacy.
"Afghamistam"-- which could as easily have been titled "Smore", "Borimg", or "Pomderous"-- marks Botch's lone foray into post-four-minute territory. Not only does this track fail miserably as an attempt at multi-dimensionality, but it's so chockfull of pretension that one might expect a grinning, fawning Burt Bacharach to emerge from the bombed-out rubble of Kamdahar. Replete with piano, sullen lyrics, and schmaltzy string orchestration, this track would try the patience of even the most devoted fanboy.
Botch's career comes to a close with "Micaragua", another cute and ineffectual hardcore ditty-- including a suitably unimpressive drum solo from Cook-- with the stamp of trivial alterna-metal trash a la Mudvayne and Mushroomhead. It's worth highlighting that every note on the album is produced exceptionally well for a self-avowed DIY band. In addition to possessing an extremely tight dynamic, the nuances of every instrument are clear and distinct (translation: slick and phony). This album so blatantly panders to a moderate, fail-safe audience it couldn't be packaged any other way.
I'll readily admit that I've never been in love with Dave Verellen's purposefully awkward metaphors, or any of the band's calculated noisecore pretexts. Still, it seemed plausible that the same band who had recorded the menacingly vague "Mondrian Was Liar", invoked Dali and John Woo on * American Nervosa * , and Orff's "Carmina Burana" on * The Unifying Themes of Sex, Death and Religion * didn't shoot its wad two years ago. In the course of listening to the same six tracks for nearly four weeks, I realized that Botch had simply exhausted their capabilities as a unit. Mercifully, Knudson and Verellen recognized their limitations, forced out a contrived and forgettable 20 minutes of music, and decided to move on to greener pastures. To all you tepid metalheads fond of referencing this fallen pack of übergeeks-with-attitude, fear not, you've still got several dozen pariahs with overdrive pedals to cling to.
