Live Review: Botch teams up with longtime friends Converge and Cave In at Roadrunner
A lot can happen in two decades, but Botch touring the nation wasn’t supposed to be one of those things. Until now. The Pacific Northwest thrashcore (is that a word?) quartet got thousands of nearing-into-middle age metal fans abuzz when this tour announcement dropped, and as luck would have it, Boston got the crown jewel of the entire tour.
Depending on Nate Newton’s onstage musings about the first time meeting Botch, which was in a basement show in Milwaukee or Madison in 1997, or Brian Cook’s recollection that it was a house show in Norfolk, Virginia that was accompanied by an unplanned fire the year before, it really doesn’t matter. These bands have a lot of history together, and the bonds forged between the Hydra Head/Deathwish collective cannot be diminished by time.
Cave In got things going first, which meant that Newton would be pulling double duty. It wasn’t quite as intensive as when he pulled quadruple duty for the Caleb Scofield benefit show in 2018, when he played with Cave In, Converge, Old Man Gloom and Zozobra. Stephen Brodsky, Adam McGrath and John-Robert Conners have been at it for a long time, seeing the ups and downs of jumping from an indie label to RCA and back again, but it hasn’t fazed them at all and with Newton filling the enormous hole left by Scofield’s tragic death, the band put out a tremendous record last year. Some older cuts like “Halo Of Flies” got the Boston crowd pumping and it was a great way to light the fuse for tonight.
Converge certainly needs no introduction. Certainly in the top tier of metalcore acts, visually and sonically the band has cut a huge swath through the music world, influencing countless bands and engaging with a worldwide fanbase. The entire band is a tightly wound spring, fueled by Ben Koller’s incredible talents behind the drum kit. It’s super rare for an opener to get an encore but this night deserved one, and how can you leave a Converge set without hearing the soul-destroying “Concubine”?
Botch took the stage, adorned with a cat perched on an amp and two trophy statues of unknown significance to me, arms out in triumphant manner. They were here at last, coming to play and checking a very important box for most people in the building. Fist pumping, crowd jumping, riff shredding, it was all on the menu tonight. It’s kind of crazy to think that the band pulled the plug after We Are The Romans, but that material was soaked up in joyous reverence and outright celebration.
More photos of all three bands below.
Botch:
Converge:
Cave In:
