The Great Escape - Music & More

Reviews:

Only three years ago it appeared that Botch were about to rewrite the noisecorerulebook with 1999's arresting We Are the Romans. Clearly it wasthe band's reluctance to forsake melody for exclusive heads-down barbarismthat made Romans so much more accessible than anything their contemporariesin Converge, Coalesce or The Dillinger Escape Plan produced to that point. Sowhen the members of the Seattle foursome announced they were going to walk awayfrom the group some nine months ago, they seemingly took an entire sub-genre'sblueprints along with them.

Their final act of duty is An Anthology of Dead Ends, a 22-minute EPof one intro and five full-length songs, all of which bear country names assong titles with curious insertions of the letter "m" where the letter"n" should be. Three of the new numbers—"Japam," "Vietmam"and "Framce"—are redolent of the angular but melodic materialthat categorized both We Are the Romans and the band's AmericanNervoso full-lengths. But it's the seven-minute epic "Afgamistam"that's the real highlight here. Propelled by plaintive, soft spoken vocalsand hushed indie guitar invoking tones of Death Cab for Cutie and Cat Power,it isn't remotely like anything Botch has tried before. And its lyrical"on the road" narrative renders it the very best traditional rocksong to emerge from the noisecore genre this side of Cave In. Shame we'llnever know what more they would have sounded like.