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Rating: 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.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Mondrian Was a Liar (02:41)
White eyes in coal mines
Concrete industry
Bare backs, baseball caps
The sweat is part of life
We're still thriving
We've got a lot of mouths to feed
And we're trying
You think I do this for me
Join the caste
Flip through old photographs of our family's past
Building your home, giving your life, our livelihood
Creators
It's always been like this
People you never see, the ones you'll never be
Working with their hands
We've downsized again
All through history building piece by piece
It's not for you to erase with your algebra and your science
Simple labor
04 Swimming the Channel vs. Driving the Chunnel (04:30)
All eyes on me, it's why we never speak
For now we'll just sit, locked and dilated
I feel buried or maybe I'm just alone
So cover me in black
It's for history
So retire the ships, the final voyage was his
06 Saint Matthew Returns to the Womb (03:04)
On the porch, two words changed life for me
And I'm not the same
He said, "Son, soon your life will change"
And I believed in him
"Your soul will be free of the pain"
"In time you'll know that it's true"
The hand of God will pick me up
"So pledge your loyalty"
So I fall to you
False eyes
Forked words
I'm ten
Now that I see you're just a man
Recruiting your followers
And this was not won by your hand
Questions and contradictions
It's like I'm following the rabbit around the track again
Around and around
And you're so sure
Two words
The changes I've endured
And I know it is all shit.
07 Frequency Ass Bandit (04:26)
Anchored Awake | Wringing my hands | Weighing
my time | Running down dreams | Buying your life |
Patience is a girl I've been trying to forget about |
Always rearing her ugly head when I am choosing
she's losing | She's the one who stills sits alone |
Comforting smile saves me from making the same
mistake drag it out of me | Take what you've got
make it better | I feel the loss I bear my own cross |
Enjoying the last seconds we have | My unseen
dictator grasps throats with both hands | It brings
about euthanasia | Who hold my fate in their hands |
Not you | Endless
08 I Wanna Be a Sex Symbol on My Own Terms (03:35)
It comes (grow) in truckloads (young) and torrents
| We spread like the flies that eat the sweet tears
from your eyes | She comes (shot) in armies
(down) fear them | We're western medicine feshly
flown | They lose (no) in the (sale) millions | But
we can help you up here's your new beliefs | Your
home our womb | We'll be crowned the new kings
| All I know I've seen through a lens | All I feel
I've learned through pages | She's a perfect ten
| Here's the supermodel for you to follow | She's
bringing something new| Worked her for so long
and we've lost
09 Man the Ramparts (10:50)
We'll man the ramparts With arrows ready With our flags up We are the Romans Nero We'll man the ramparts With arrows ready With our flags up We are the Romans Nero We'll man the ramparts With arrows ready With our flags up We are the Romans
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