When I first saw the name Bas Rotten in a subject line of an email in my inbox, I thought, "Like Rotten Sound? That's got to be a grindcore band." Then I saw the cover art, an impressionist oil painting of two men boxing, their flesh appearing to merge as they batter each other's bodies with fists and force of will, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, that's got to be a hardcore band." And then I read that the band was from Portugal, and found my mind shifting gears, preparing me to evaluate some kind of communally minded crust punk cadre. And then I hit play on the streaming link they provided me, and... Turns out I was right. And wrong. About all of it. And none of it.
Bas Rotten are a grindcore band. They're also a crust punk group and a hardcore band, who play like they're opening for Iron Reagan. Scratch that; they play like THEY ARE Iron Reagan! A clip from the film Take Shelter greets you in the foyer of the opening track of their album Surge. "The Blow" begins with the dialog above shrieked over a similarly disconcerting clip of Rod Serling of the Twilight Zone discussing his favorite topic, man's folly and penchant for self-delusion. Somehow the layering of these two clips failed to prepare me adequately for the point when the reigns of the track fall into the cruel hands of vocalist Joao. If you are like me, once those locked and loaded, grind-grooves kick into gear under Joao's menacing snarl, you'll feel like a trap has been sprung and like you're now helpless to fight back what's coming your way. Like a garrote had been looped around the base of your neck, you're being to choked into submission, the sound of Joao's gnashing rasp ringing in your ears, and the lash of the band's twin guitars (both performed by different men, also named Joao) churning the air like a blender, just inches away from your face, getting precariously closer to the bridge of your nose as you blackout.
You're going to want to keep your wits about you, though, because the surfy, side-swipe "Dissociation" is more than capable of bodying your ass into a nearby dumpster, even with less than a minute run time. It's followed in quick succession by the crusty, rust-lined chop of "Prime Cuts," and death-daring, slide and sever, proto-thrash of "Violence." It's amazing how quickly Bas Rotten can pull off some absolutely, heroic thrash riffs, and at bowel loosening, muscle-gelling speeds, shifting between Napalm Death-driven grooves and bone-chilling, doom metal channels, with the best example of this dynamic being possibly, incredibly grim and gnarly "Worth."
Napalm Death would obviously win a paternity test if one were administered for Bas Rotten, but so would Trash Talk, DRI, Destroyed in Seconds, and Nuclear Assualt. It's impossible to really distinguish a dominant linage from any of these bands as their attributable genes have fused together into new, horrid hybrid phenotypes in Bas Rotten's sound. The result is, as the opening quote from Take Shelter implies, a storm, like a total force of nature. There really is no containing the belligerent monstrosity that these Portuguese punishers have unleashed. All you can do is watch helplessly from a distance and hope the stampede of sound doesn't abruptly shift trajectory and beeline for your undefended position. You can admire Surge, but I guarantee, you can't outrun it.
