‘Smart’

Who’ll be more broken up by the recent Test Icicles breakup: people who pretend they like to dance, or people who pretend to like metal? I’m going with the metalheadz, ‘cos the dancerz can still bite their lips and spazz to a new practitioner of the fancy hi-hat every week. A co-worker said he appreciated the TIs’ “smart metal” guitar. No. A band like Kataklysm could eat the three Test Icicles on lunch break from building a 13-story temple to Xul and still not run into overtime.

You know one of ’em went to art school because For Screening Purposes Only‘s only real hook, which punches out the line “We could do with some more poison,” does not appear in the song entitled “Boa vs. Python.” That’s thinking! In truth, Test Icicles were more a jokey hardcore band than a jokey dance band, but they did value rhythm much like LiLiPUT back on their song “Split.” The guys’ voices could call and respond and trade off lines in elaborate arrangements, so the whole album has momentum and some fun, even if you can’t remember any of the indistinct songs or voices. Well, one of them sounded like the guy in the Bled, but that’s not exactly an endorsement.