Botch, 19 May 2024

Botch is an American mathcore band formed in 1993 in Tacoma, Washington. The band, featuring Brian Cook, Dave Knudson, Tim Latona and Dave Verellen, spent four years as a garage band and released several demos and EPs before signing to Hydra Head Records. Through the label, Botch released two studio albums: American Nervoso (1998) and We Are the Romans (1999). The group toured extensively and internationally in support of their albums with like-minded bands such as The Blood Brothers, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Ink & Dagger and Jesuit. Botch struggled to write a third studio album, and in 2002 the group broke up due to tensions among the band members and creative differences. Hydra Head posthumously released an EP of songs the group had been working on before they split titled An Anthology of Dead Ends and a live album documenting their final show titled 061502 in 2006.

After Botch broke up, most of the members went on to form or join new bands in the Seattle/Tacoma area including: Minus the Bear, Narrows, Roy, Russian Circles and These Arms Are Snakes.

While Botch was well-received by music critics and cited as an influence on numerous hardcore bands in the years following their breakup, the group was generally overlooked by the local Washington underground hardcore scene. The group spent their active years "poking fun" at the local music scene by avoiding common clichés. Rejecting contemporaneous trends in hardcore, Botch eschewed the usual "skull and crossbones" aesthetic and ubiquitous "chugga-chugga" riffs for a stripped-down, confessional presentation and complex arrangements.