Watch Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Harkonen members cover Botch

If you aim to release a series of heavy cover versions, you might as well start as you mean to go on.

The first in a series called Hardcore Summer sees Dillinger Escape Plan’s Dimitri Minakakis, Converge’s Kurt Ballou, Harkonen’s Ben Verellen and Rorshach’s Andrew Gormley team up to tackle a track by Botch.

“Welcome to Hardcore Summer, our tribute to all things mosh,” reads the intro on the Two Minutes To Late Night YouTube channel. “Our first cover in this series is track one on the Seattle mathcore legends Botch’s masterpiece, We Are The Romans, To Our Friends in Great White North.

“Fun fact, this cover was mixed by Matt Bayles who mixed the original album. We’’e going to be pumpin' out the jams all summer so please buy a shirt or support us on Patreon so we can keep making awesome videos for y’all.”

For an additional fun fact, they also noted that Verellen “did backing vocals during Botch’s last ever show.”

We Are The Romans was released in 1999 and landed with a heavy impact. Guitarist Dave Knudson recalled: “There were hardcore cliches that we were just never gonna put into our songs. There wasn’t gonna be any palm-muting or open-E power chords and shit like that .”

Bassist Brian Cook reflected that Botch always knew they didn’t fit in the scene that inspired them most, which included bands like Jesus Lizard, Chavez and June of ’44. “‘Evil math rock’ just seemed like the best way to acknowledge that stuff publicly without trying to sound like we were jumping on a bandwagon,” he said.

Artists

Not only is one-time online news editor Martin an established rock journalist and drummer, but he’s also penned several books on music history, including SAHB Story: The Tale of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a band he once managed, and the best-selling Apollo Memories about the history of the legendary and infamous Glasgow Apollo. Martin has written for Classic Rock and Prog and at one time had written more articles for Louder than anyone else (we think he's second now). He’s appeared on TV and when not delving intro all things music, can be found travelling along the UK’s vast canal network.