Botch
We Are The Romans

THE REVIEW

It's New Year's Eve, and while everyone is organizing parties and dinners, I, who theoretically should be organizing one at my place, am instead writing this review of "We Are the Romans" by the Botch.

The USA is the new Rome indicated by Botch, and it's a Rome that falls, and with disastrous inevitability gives way to the weight of years, the small daily revolutions, and the perpetual innovation of a chaotic and fractal civilization like that of humans.

And so the sound of Botch is mastodonic, booming yet also in a certain sense chaotic and fractal, clear and schematic: a sound that fits into an evolved metalcore that is now free of the prejudices that have always bogged it down, ready to evolve into what is often called mathcore today. Twisted riffs (and impossible solos that sound like they’re played by four hands), drums that mark counter-times on polyrhythms, jazzy influences - but especially the King Crimson who seem to eternally watch over the background of this album - yet the scheme of things flows so well, just as if it were a pure hardcore piece, simple and linear, energetic. They hit hard, but they know when it’s time to be a little calm and catch a breath, yet it’s just a trick: a cyclical pattern, fractal (I’ve fallen in love with this adjective) traps the listener in cathartic, furious moments, pure annihilation of reason, a picture of profound anarchy that portrays the colossal fall of the Empire.

And, despite everything, the skeleton, the supporting pillar of this sonic work is permeated with clarity. Of a founded, maybe schizophrenic, sick clarity, yet it’s still about clarity, rationality, compositional coherence: already on the first listen, I had that indefinable feeling of "these guys put the right notes in the right place". Exhilarating, isn’t it?

Assault after assault, catharsis after catharsis, revolution after revolution, a thundering march introduces the last track, which might perhaps be criticized for excess of epicness (the a cappella choir that chants the album title, for example). Yet the apocalyptic, redundant, and disastrous image is portrayed with extraordinary effectiveness.

The album closes with a hidden track, seven minutes of electronic. Yes, electronic indeed. Seasoned with as many distortions as you like, but it's still electronic... not exactly the kind of thing we expect in the conclusion of such an album. Yet the experiment - and surprise - work well. It fits into the crowded context of the track.

Ok, 2006 is over (best wishes). Listen to this big album. Now everyone go get drunk.