SilentScream213 Botch’s second and final album carries many of the same strengths and weaknesses as their debut.

To start off, the pros: - The drumming. Lord, the drumming is fantastic. It’s varied, it’s technical, it’s metallic and aggressive, it’s capable of slowing down for sludgy, moody sections. Perfectly tows the line between serving the music and standing out. - The songs are long and varied, and cover a greater range of speeds than the debut. More prominent are the slower, sludgier sections, which give the music more room to breath. - The moments they lean towards Atmospheric Sludge Metal are the best. They manage to craft some harrowing atmospheres that actually carry some weight. The best example is the second half of “C. Thomas Howell as the ‘Soul Man’,” which is definitely their best song. The simple chords and double bass drumming at the end are a perfect climax that actually sounds passionate and memorable. Wish the band did more of this.

However, the cons: - Like the debut, it’s not very memorable. It has no hooks to speak of, neither in the vocals nor music, and that’s thanks to being very inharmonious. The songs are neat when they’re playing, but once they’re done, it’s very difficult to remember anything from them. (Swimming the Channel averts this, hence being easily their best song.) - The riffs are angular and dissonant. They don’t really… evoke anything, aside from anxiety. It’s not catchy, but it’s also not evil or anything like that. Just kind of uncomfortable, but not in an emotionally gripping way. - The songs are long and varied, [i]but[/i]… pretty much just swap between slow anxious, fast anxious, mathy anxious… it’s all somehow monotonous despite the variety in playing style. Like, the band can only play one feeling, which is manic discomfort. Which is cool if you like that, but it’d only work for me if the music and vocals/lyrics were more emotional. This isn’t; it’s very abstract both musically and conceptually, so the focus on anxious moods doesn’t evoke anything from me aside from discomfort. - The lyrics are too abstract to deride much meaning, which is unacceptable when vocals are screamed in this way. There’s thought, but no passion. The final track is basically ten minutes of them saying the same thing over and over. - The long Drum n’ Bass track closing the album is the worst track. Weak ending.

For these reasons I find the album good, but not great. I can understand the praise, especially among the genre. But I think this is more niche than the ratings lead on: I think you’d have to be pretty into this kind of music specifically for it to click just right.

SilentScream213 There’s manic energy and aggression here, and it sounds quite dark by the genre’s standards. Musicianship is impressive, songwriting is interesting and varied… on a technical level, the album is rock solid.

Where it falls flat is in the memorability department. The riffs are very dissonant and chaotic, and really not pleasant in any way. There’s no memorable lead guitarwork to speak of; usually the guitar is switching between chugs and dissonant chords. The vocals are good, but again, just not super memorable. The lyrics aren’t quite evocative enough to boost them either. The rhythm section, on the other hand, is all-around fantastic. Both drums and bass pave awesome pathways for the music to follow, ever changing and full of speedy, aggressive work. “John Woo” is a great example of the Metal influence in the drumming, with fantastic double bass beats carrying the music forward with gusto.

All in all though, just not pleasant enough for me to want to revisit, and not memorable enough to… well, remember much of it.

siLLy puPPy Progressive metalcore is one of those splinter genres that is too wildly abrasive for prog lovers and too artsy fartsy for many who indulge in the core section at the metal supermarket but has been somewhat popular in crafting a unique hybridization of the two styles for those into both sides of the fence. The term mathcore covers a lot of these bands in a generic sense but just like technical death metal and progressive death metal, has slightly different dynamics which take place. The Tacoma, WA based BOTCH straddled the lines between straight out metalcore and mathcore and thus found a few fans from both sides of the fence including Aaron Turner who was the vocalist for the post-metal band Isis and founder of the Hydra Head Records label.

BOTCH formed all the way back in 1993 and released a series of EPs of loud and abrasive metal / mathcore but also was more adventurous than the usual band of noisemakers by covering unexpected pieces such as Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” on “The John Birch Conspiracy Theory” EP. After several years of taking the mathcore realm to more fertile grounds and incessantly touring which gained the band a larger following, BOTCH finally released its debut album AMERICAN NERVOSO in 1998 which featured a stealthy mix of mathcore laced post-hardcore with occasional drifts into piano based progressive rock. The album sort of went over the heads of many as whole progressive metalcore thing hadn’t really caught on yet but nevertheless the band toured with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Jesuit. The album as you may have guess debuted on Hydra Head Records!

AMERICAN NERVOSO originally only had nine tracks on the first pressing but subsequent releases have added five bonus tracks which are all worthy editions albeit clearly in the bonus track realms. The album starts off in full metalcore mode with “Hutton’s Great Heat Engine” and is a little misleading as the album doesn’t start crafting a more intricate deliveries with more frequent time signature changes until the track takes off. Late on it hots softer passages that escape the incessant bombast of the frenetic bass, drum and guitar assaults linked with Dave Vereillen’s frantic screaming, however even on the opening number, BOTCH are clearly not your run of the mill metalcore group as there are moments of more atmospheric contemplation with subdued clean vocals and more guitar sustain than rampaging chords.

Perhaps what is most effective in this kind of extreme metal is the diversity of the guitar riffs and styles of playing throughout the album. One trick pony extremism can become quite tiring for an album’s run yet BOTCH excel at keeping the raw core bombast as the album’s emphasis while pulling enough tricks out of their sleeves to leave an extremist metal lover’s attention fully in tact. In addition to rhythmic variations and tempo changes, the band delivers some progressive deviations as well as a few moments of respite to allow the contrast to sink in such as the space rock beginning of “Dead For A Minute.” While labeled as mathcore on many databases, AMERICAN NERVOSO is much more of a progressive metalcore album with some mathcore seeping in once and a while. Regardless of how you classify BOTCH’s debut full-length, it’s certainly a compelling listening experience if you can handle the incessant screamed vocals. BOTCH would release one more album before breaking up but they certainly made their short run count.