NME Album Review (For Screening Purposes Only): 8/10
OK. Deep breath. Here we go. Drum-roll. Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... Right, not a lot of people know this... but... The Beatles were rubbish. Toss. Crud. Cack. They ruined pop music; for me, for you, for all of us... the utter b*****ds.
See, I love 'Yellow Submarine' as much as the next schmuck, and, y'know, catchy songs and all that, but their anointment as sacred cows a mere five years after the birth of the most thrilling cultural medium ever - pop music - effectively stymied its development before it ever had a chance to get out of nappies. The Beatles, bound by early acclaim, held back the progress of pop for 45 years, giving us an ideal, a rulebook, and an early watermark of pop's utter brilliance. How many times have you heard the phrase "bigger than The Beatles"?
London trio Test Icicles know that there's no place in pop for sacred cows or rulebooks. They know that pop music is about mum asking you to turn the volume down, not, "Your dad looked a lot like Ringo when he was 18." They know pop should be free to be what it wants to be. Test Icicles don't care one hoot for being bigger than The Beatles. They don't care about anything other than what happens next.
If NWA had collaborated with Slayer, then you imagine they'd have penned a song as savage as single 'Boa Vs Python'. It sounds like Wu-Tang Clan dressed as Vikings and pillaging the black-metal community, while Sam Merrann's vocals sound like he's making that noise - a gnarled frequency akin to a haemorrhaging mother wolf - for the first time.
Elsewhere, it's the three guitars that make Test Icicles' debut so dangerous, and Devonte Hynez and Rory Aggwelt's duelling machete-sharp metal licks serrate the band's melodic grounding like skewers through Play-Doh. 'Pull The Lever' is like the moment you encountered the John Peel show/picked up NME/stumbled into a rock gig, and left later in the direction of your local record shop, a changed person. 'Dancing On Pegs', meanwhile, is a veritable "isn't music brilliant?" moment, epitomising all that is so eccentric about Test Icicles' sonic adventure. It sounds like they've never heard any music before, like they believe they're the first band to have ever made a noise like this. To an extent, they're right.
Test Icicles take hardcore punk, doom metal, hip-hop, funk, avant pop and 400bpm gabba, and squish those forms into new, enthralling shapes. Cynics will say they sound like a band lost, without an idea of what they want to be, but like all pop pioneers - including The Beatles before their pan-generational beatification - they're asking questions of who they want to be with every song on the record, never putting a roof on their ambitions.
This is a record that wipes the board clean. It's a record that will invigorate and re-energise. Too many of our greatest bands have had their ambitions buffered by everything The Beatles achieved so early (the Pistols, The Smiths, the Roses, Oasis, The Libertines), but Test Icicles will inspire a generation who are striving for the next noise, the next trip. Like the birth of pop, it will make you believe that anything is possible. You are free.
Pitchfork Review: 8.1/10
Feeling Nosferatu vibes this Halloween week? Dig Test Icicles: The UK trio is hard, fast, and viciously catchy, but above all scary. Guitars don't chug and wail; they whinny and scream. Carnival organ gallops ghoulish frequencies on "Pull the Lever". "Catch It" is just a scrambled nightmare with a psychosexual thrust. Yup, it's about the most chilling thing going next to Skateboard P's verses.
But the band puts some jaunt to its haunt, namely in frontman Sam Merrann's vocals, which are dynamic but uniformly hair-raising. For those who think acid-throated vox are the province solely of American bands like Blood Brothers, here's a Brit who would give any stateside howler a run for his money in a Drano-drinking contest. The vocal venom sits well on opener "Your Biggest Mistake", whose distortion-eaten guitars call, respond, and scorch the earth. Elsewhere, the singer proves versatile, carrying subcutaneous melodies and bratting-up his quieter spit.
When the band's slash-and-burn post-hardcore finally yields beautiful hooks, the screams can be corrosive. Merrann serves up Carengie Deli portions-- ample multi-tracking and agile trade-offs ensure no measure goes unaccompanied by voice, no lyric unechoed by a scream, and no guitar kick unaccented. But havoc and harmony learn to coexist, most harmoniously on "Circle Square Triangle", whose guitars punch thick upbeats despite an ungainly note count. "Pull the Lever" takes a rare indrawn breath, then spits the album's silkiest (and sickest) chorus.
So obviously the boys have tools like a baby LeBron. But are their acrobatics more catchy than contrived? The lead singer's f**king nicknamed "Dangerr," and the band name is one of the worst this side of Panic! at the Disco. Next you're gonna tell me Test Icicles play lipstick pink guitars and claim 15,000 Myspace friends. Without the übertight chops and huge choruses on 24-hour call, those facts might matter. Instead they're harmless gimmicks, more easily ignored than derided.
For development's sake, the band ought to call Frenchkiss, which has this kind of slanted and chanted dance-punk all but vertically integrated. Screening Purposes would benefit from more voluminous production, especially on a song like "Your Biggest Mistake", which packs several fast-moving parts into a shallow sonic field. The effect is disorienting, like trying to focus on a single buzz in a bee-box.
The more linear numbers have a better sense of equilibrium, but the straightest-- "Catch It," which cuts a robotic beeline, and "Maintain the Focus"-- are the least musically compelling. After a torrid opening sweep, the record starts to unravel, connecting its component dots rather than synthesizing them. Fifty minutes-- with only a gauzy organ-droning interlude for a bathroom break-- is a cross-country haul with a record that's all forte, all the time. But the hooks stick long after windedness wears off.
Though the single's called "Boa vs. Python", Test Icicles are all cobra. Quick-tempered and ready to pounce at the drop of a double-time bridge, the band splits the difference between cockney, cocked neck, and coq au vin. The total package suggests a less test-icicular, dancefloor sympathetic Glassjaw-- which means show-goers would do well to train hard and eat a big pasta dinner before hitting the parquet. But asking the band to slow down would be like ticketing Tony Stewart.
I guess they're one of those bands where you will either thing they are insanely brilliant or incredibly rubbish. I'm leaning towards the former.
