Botch - 061502

by Simon T Diplock

Llike a greatest hits of noisecore

"Anything with the quartet’s name on is bought, sold, collected and treasured, maybe a thousand times more than during the nine years the band were active. But that’s got to be hindsight, right. No band is that good. Right? Wrong."

Hindsight is a funny thing. Look backwards at the good times and it’s all glossy wonder and rosy-coloured memories of things that never really were that great in the first place. Hindsight, especially in recent times, has been kind to Botch. The Seattle band broke up in 2002 but are now remembered in endearing tones and labelled as legends. People look back and believe that they pioneered hardcore, that they invented the metallic racket that so many people now trade in and pretty much started a whole scene. And today, anything with the quartet’s name on is bought, sold, collected and treasured, maybe a thousand times more than during the nine years the band were active. But that’s got to be hindsight, right. No band is that good. Right?

Wrong. Because this DVD, the second (after the odds’n’sods ‘Unifying Themes Redux’ CD) of several planned Botch retrospectives, shows just how good the band really were. And they were amazing. The main feature of ‘061502’ is a full live show, Botch’s last live show, the date of which makes for the title. And, from the howling beginning of ‘St. Mathew Returns To The Womb’ through the fierce punch of ‘Oma’ to the call-and-response mad mathiness of ‘Hutton’s Great Heat Engine’, the tracklisting reads like a greatest hits of noisecore. Or whatever kind of core you think that Botch helped create.

Band conspirator Matt Bayles has done a fine job with the sound of the show. Every fidgety guitar line and rattling, inventive drum fill made clear but the gloriously fuzzy, jarring and disjointed nature of songs like ‘John Woo’ and ‘Japam’ left alone. The images aren’t great though. This is video from five years ago, filmed on old cameras by people that never knew they were working towards a DVD production for a celebrated band. But it rarely matters. So long as you can make Dave Verellen out in the dark, thrashing about like he’s plugged into the mains, screaming like a banshee or just about see Dave Knudson’s fingers making light work of the some of the most frantic guitar parts of the last decade, every ounce of impact of this hits home.

And yes it’s serious, seriously fucking awesome, but from a gnarly, gnawing cover of the B-52’s ‘Rock Lobster’ to the genuinely funny commentary track here where the band lampoon all their copycats (of which there are many many sub-standard ones), claim to have invented clapping and drink every time somebody misses a note, this is always entertaining stuff. Botch’s only music video and a few other live songs from a 2000 date make up the rest of the special features.

So this is not only a testament of a great band finishing things at the peak of their powers, this is a vital reminder of what this music was always supposed to be about. And if you need a hint, it doesn’t include hair or jeans. There are no ‘scene kids’ in attendance here and almost none of the hardcore ‘dancing’ that so regularly ruins shows now. And, fully embracing the risk of sounding like a stagnant and elitist curmudgeon, these, quite clearly, really were the good old days. And ‘061502’ proves it.

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