Botch: “It’s been so good to close things off properly, to write the ending to this story that we wanted to”

On June 15, 2024, at Seattle’s historic Showbox theatre, Botch will play their final show. Again.

Time flies. For the Tacoma trailblazers, it always has. Emerging from the United States’ Pacific Northwest in the mid-1990s, their brand of gnarly, chaotic mathcore detonated like a car bomb, blowing away the plaid-clad spectre of grunge with an unequivocal progressivism and urgency that felt almost predestined to be shortlived. By February 2002, their incendiary chemistry was declared no longer workable and they called it a day. Twenty-two years on, they’re drawing that line in the sand again: older, wiser, but still knowing that it’s better to burn out than fade away.

“Any time you start out on a project, it’s good to think about the mortality of it,” reckons bassist Brian Cook of an unlikely reunion that’s run on from October 15, 2022. “Every band is going to end, eventually. But is it gonna end of your own volition? Or because something bad happens? Or because someone pulls the plug? It’s good to have an understanding of the beginning, the middle and the end, and the closure that comes with that. We’ve seen a lot of bands who’ve left it open-ended with reunion dates, and dwindled into irrelevance. We wanted to do what we wanted to do, then go back to our normal lives, to have this band be a finite thing with a certain time and place.”

That feels very Botch. In an era where some band ‘break-ups’ barely last longer than the normal gap between album cycles, their return has not come across as an opportunistic hop on the reunion bandwagon. The feeling of business left unfinished was a big part of that (see: the frustrated title of their final EP An Anthology Of Dead Ends). The organic tentativeness of their return played a big part, too, with a short performance at a private party for producer Matt Bayles leading to home territory shows in February 2023, then a strictly limited series of follow-ups driven not by the band’s grand plans, but by their curiosity and vociferous fan desire.

“After two decades, and with us having said we’d never reunite, there is an air of excitement,” Brian goes on. “On a level, it felt bad to keep adding dates, but there was an excitement and a demand we wanted to take advantage of to give this music a victory lap, to do some of the things that we missed out on the first time round, or just to revisit those that we missed after 20 years away.”

Fans of truly complex heavy music understand that these songs deserve that victory lap. To Our Friends In The Great White North. Afghamistam. C. Thomas Howell As The “Soul Man”. Hutton’s Great Heat Engine. They’re compositions that have impacted everyone from OG contemporaries Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan to Architects, Every Time I Die and Knocked Loose.

But what would their youthful authors, full of piss and vinegar, think if they could see Botch now?

“Probably that we’re just a bunch of showmen not sticking to our ideals!” laughs vocalist Dave Verellen. “It’s a good question. I wonder if they’d take us seriously. When we were first a band, we played in basements and all-ages clubs. These reunion shows have all been ‘rock star shit’ with lights and crew and merch mania and all the things that we never really got to experience. But I think they’d be impressed, too. I believe we’re playing as well, if not better, than we ever did!”

Time waits for no band, but the unhinged abandon of Botch’s early days, experienced alongside guitarist Dave Knudson and drummer Tim Latona, was something that could never be recaptured. As older men or parents, they look back on their own wildness with bittersweet perspective.

“You can’t shoot fireworks out of your vehicle at other cars on the freeway these days,” Dave laughs, flashing back. “If you try to sleep in your van on the turnpike in 2024, you could get beat up or go to jail. But we did back then. I don’t think my kids could do a lot of those things with that carefree mindset and get away with it – because other people interpret it as breaking the law!”

“There were a lot of stunts and dares,” nods Brian. “A lot of, ‘How much would you pay me if I…?’ Where now I look back like, ‘Oooof!’ and feel glad that it wasn’t captured on YouTube. But there are also all the times where we crashed in punk houses or on people’s floors. We rarely stayed at hotels. We just relied on the kindness of people at shows. At the time I thought it was this amazing adventure that demonstrated the hospitality and self-reliance of the DIY community, but I look back and see that we were in some very vulnerable situations in dodgy places with dodgy people.”

So, Botch haven’t been tempted to go back to crashing on floors, even for authenticity’s sake?

“When you’re 20 years old staying at a punk house full of 20-year-olds, it’s cool,” Brian grins broadly at the tease. “When you’re 46, it feels real fuckin’ creepy!”

Finding a sweet spot between the fast and loose energy that won their reputation and putting on a show befitting the more mature individuals (and much bigger band) they’ve transformed into over that time away has been key. Reconnecting with these songs – and the feelings from which they sprung – in the live arena is a vital part of that.

“On several occasions I’ve felt this real euphoric juice,” enthuses Dave, “where I remember the reasons I wrote what I did and how it still works after all these years…”

But it’s also about seeing new audiences’ perspective.

“There’s been a lot of grappling with how we were never that band who played in bigger rock clubs, but that we’re coming back with so much more attention,” expands Brian. “A real challenge has been to keep the energy and spirit of Botch while still allowing people to actually see us. I remember going to see the band Assück at More Than Music Fest in Columbus, Ohio, in 1998. They were these grind legends who refused to even play on a stage. I think [the ethics of that are] so cool, but it’s less cool to think about the 1,000 people who showed up to see the set and how only like 30 actually could. It’s always about eliminating the boundary between artists and crowd. In hardcore, everyone is part of the show. But how do you do that in the age of barricades and insurance clauses? It’s been tricky. But I think we’ve presented this music in a way that stays true.”

It’s also been about trying to connect with and progress the genre around them. Questioned about the genre-busting state of hardcore today, they’re quick to remind us that by the time they left off in 2002, Botch were barely recognisable as a ‘hardcore band’, and far more interested in genuinely boundary-pushing outfits like Shellac or Don Caballero than a scene that had been enveloped by the glossy world of Hot Topic and Warped Tour. As much as they’ve enjoyed the sharing stages with old mates Converge and Cave In again, giving the rub to younger talent was more important.

“We didn’t want this just to be a nostalgia run,” stresses Brian. “I didn’t want to be the equivalent to the hair metal bands that would play the sad rock club on the edge of town at the end of the ’90s.

“We tried to follow the same sense of community and creative spirit that we’ve always been about, and to elevate those younger bands doing the same thing, whether that be Roman Candle and Negative Blast or others like FACS and Primitive Man, neither of whom you’d consider as hardcore, but who make music that’s challenging and exciting, dangerous and subversive. It’s about that hardcore feeling of music making you say, ‘Holy shit, what is this sound?!’ I’ll always choose the challenging over the formulaic. And if that’s ‘not hardcore’? So what? Hardcore is just a fucking word, anyway!”

“We’re not playing shows in churches or Denny’s,” shrugs Dave. “We’re not part of that hardcore scene. Those kids probably just see us as ‘Dudes that were popular back in the ’90s’, anyway.”

Ultimately, this reunion has been more about Botch and the listeners who’ve waited too long – or never even got the chance – to see them play. It’s something of a headfuck, they admit, to meet the grown-up kids of fans from first time round, or to meet people in their 30s or 40s at their gigs who’ve waited that long just to go to their first hardcore show.

As tantalisingly brilliant as comeback single One Twenty Two was, as well, they’re at pains to stress that it was really a Dave K solo song that grew arms and legs, and that more new material isn’t on the cards. And those final shows will be mark the closing of a book that won’t ever be reopened again. Probably.

“I’d never say never to anything,” gestures Brian. “I said this reunion would never happen for years, and look where we are today. But the only reason it did happen was a perfect storm of free time in my schedule [Brian also plays in Russian Circles and Sumac], the other guys having availability, our albums being reissued through Sargent House, and us happening to record One Twenty Two over COVID. Maybe something like that could happen again. But if it takes another 20 years, all of us will be in our mid-60s. And I don’t think anyone really needs to see Botch come back at that age!”

“Time really is the most important commodity in all of this,” Dave concurs. “It has been fun to sing again. It looks like these pipes still work. And I’d be interested in doing anything that the other guys want to. But I don’t know if it makes sense to keep trying to squeeze blood from this rock.”

If this is the end, every show that Botch have left – including imminent dates in Bristol, Manchester and London – will be a celebration. Stressing that they’re very much not at the finish line just yet, Brian and Dave acknowledge that this new adventure has very much completed Botch’s big picture: the long-delayed final beat in a characteristically chaotic composition that’s taken decades to play out.

“Four years ago, I’d have been very protective of Botch’s legacy and very hesitant to add anything on to that,” concludes Brian. “It was its own complete story. It didn’t need an extra chapter or a sequel or a director’s cut with a CGI Jabba The Hutt. But we’ve ultimately done something that’s brought people a lot of happiness. A lot of music that’s meaningful to me came from the past. My entry into hardcore was through bands like Minor Threat, who retained their power and meaning for me long after they broke up, but who I never got to experience live. I want to show that music from the past, like ours, should be regarded in the same way as modern music. And I feel such gratitude that people did care, that they were excited to see us back doing it on our own terms.”

“A lot of bands would’ve paid good money to get back together and to play the kinds of shows that we have,” Dave signs off. “We’ve ticked a lot of boxes that weren’t really even on our radar. But the main thing is that Dave K, Tim, Brian and I are hanging out again. We had a pretty serious departure from each other, and we didn’t really have a lot of communication for a long time. So it feels great to be back together alongside people with whom we have so many great memories. It’s been so good to close things off properly, to write the ending to this story that we wanted to.”

Botch play their final UK dates from March 21 – 23. Get your tickets now.

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