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.
