Perhaps the word most commonly applied to hardcore punk bands by both critics and casual fans is "scary." It's true that with their blistering tempos, larynx-shredding vocals and vulgar lyrics, these bands can be scary, but in a neutral sort of way. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are good or bad, just...scary.
But really, no one who says bands like the Blood Brothers or Death from Above 1979 scare them is serious. The music of these bands can be a bit intimidating, but it is still being made by skinny dudes with skinnier jeans, tight t-shirts and runny mascara. These people may sound like they can hurt you, but they definitely don't look like it.
London's Test Icicles, (Rory Aggwelt, Sam Merrann and Devonte Hynez), are a band that already looks marginally more menacing than average. And with a sound as hard, loud and savagely bloodthirsty as the one they have crafted on their full-length debut, "For Screening Purposes Only," they could all look like Macaulay Culkin and still make you wet your pants. Don't kid yourself. This is a hardcore band that you should actually be frightened of.
But to limit this album to its terrifying qualities is to grossly overlook what is at its core: a rich, ambitious and appetizing debut from a band with an average age of 21. Sounding a decade older, the trio shoves together elements of hardcore, heavy metal, two-step and dry irony. Buffing it all with a pop sensibility that some bands take careers to find, the band may not have created the perfect album, but the caliber of this one indicates that it may very soon.
The songs are simultaneously radio-ready and genuinely threatening. The creepy "Pull the Lever," with its ominous, mocking bass line, shrieking guitars and searing vocals, evokes a heyday Dead Kennedys fronted by that guy on MSNBC who gives over-enthusiastic stock tips. (That guy is way too into the economy not to be a monster of some kind, and that's scary.)
Yet the chorus is so catchy ("Kindly waiting / for connection / this deafening roar is breaking my receiver"), and the song so well-constructed that it's both danceable and headphone-worthy.
The thick, crunchy riffs and pounding bass drum of "Boa vs. Python" is about as sincerely disturbing as hardcore gets, but the band loosens up the slightest bit for the chorus. Again, the hooky refrain, with its sarcastic backing vocals, keeps you reeled in. The young band already seems to know how to toy with an audience, slapping them around until they are just about to quit, then rewarding them for hanging in there with catchy, dancy energy.
Test Icicles has mastered the art of tantalizing the listener with one-or-two-beat-long silences before unleashing the volatile sections of their songs. Even better, they employ the technique enough so that it's effective, but not so much that it sounds trite. These musical intricacies that prod at listeners' feet and booties while tempering the stormy destruction of the Icicles' hardcore sound indicate maturity beyond the band's years, and they abound on "Purposes."
Sometimes though, the band skips the part where it slaps the audience around, skimping on the hardcore just to get to the catchy parts. "Circle, Square, Triangle," with its glitzy guitar and handclaps, is about as punishing as The Killers, who, incidentally, this song seems borrowed from.
The songwriting, too, occasionally veers away from abstruse and sardonic, sounding more like the bedroom poetry of whiny emo sissies than the blaring brays of ADD hardcore. Other times, the band takes it too far the other way and leaves out the pop-sensible sheen, like on the horrific "Catch It!", an awful soup of drum machine, guitar wankery and nonsensical time-signature shifts.
But there are more great songs than bad here, and though "For Screening Purposes Only" probably won't be on many year-end top 10s, it probably won't be in Test Icicles' career top 10, either. The album is not totally brilliant, but most of the songs are. At 19, 19 and 25, the band members show more than just glimpses of how talented and ambitious they are, and how well talent and ambition can coexist. This won't be the last or best we will hear from the Test Icicles.
