Latest vinyl reissue of Botch's final album We Are The Romans from 1999, a high water mark in the field of angular, progged-out metalcore that would go on to inspire legions of bands, almost none of which ever came anywhere close to capturing the bold creativity and psychotic energy of Botch at their peak. With these nine songs, Botch perfected their metallic math rock attack, taking the sort of spiraling, complex guitar structures of bands like Slint and Shellac and fusing 'em to the crushing heaviness and speed-fueled aggression of thrash and metallic hardcore. Listening to this again, it's notable that Romans has also aged far better than many of the other likeminded albums that came out during this era, due in large part to the band's attention to songwriting and their ability to craft some genuinely catchy music out of the skronky, angular aggression, and many of the songs on Romans were fleshed out with effective atmospheric passages and memorable hooks, striking a balance with their still-dizzying musical acrobatics that continue to resonate with a fevered power.
Dense math-metal carnage spills out across songs like opener "To Our Friends In The Great White North" and "Mondrian Was A Liar", shifting into monstrous lead-plated grooves and off-kilter time signatures. The hushed spoken lyrics and dark riffing of "Swimming The Channel Vs. Driving The Chunnel" is a particularly Slinty slab of metallic math rock, and one of the most haunting songs on the album. Tightening the tension with well-placed passages of angular rhythmic weirdness like the beginning of "Transitions From Persona To Object", Botch paved the way for the lethal serpentine groove that rears it's misshapen head later in the song amid a swarm of bizarre electronic effects. This is epic, apocalyptic music, filled with passages of devastating heaviness that rival the likes of Meshuggah, especially with the almost eleven minute long closer "Man The Ramparts", a slithering skronk-metal saga that lurches into some surprisingly dubby territory as it uncoils across an entire side of the record, drifting out into a cloud of choral voices, a weirdly liturgical stretch of atmospheric vocal drift laced with lovely female singing that extends for several minutes before the band finally crashes back in with one final onslaught of crushing, dire heaviness. Immense stuff that stands as some of the very best math-metal of its time, We Are The Romans also features an untitled track on the final side of this vinyl reissue that is actually Logic Probe's pummeling drum n' bass remix of the Botch song "Thank God for Worker Bees" off of their American Nervoso album, the original song's crushing angular guitars transformed into tangles of crazed metallic crunch scattered among the track's deep bass swells and sinister electronic ambience, fused to a brutal looped rhythm.
Comes on 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket, re-mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin.