If The Darkness had relied on the Sex Pistols or the Beastie Boys rather than Queen for their gently amusing brand of irony-heavy rock, this is what it might have sounded like. Odds are though, you wouldn’t have got any of the three clearly demented individuals here squeezing into spandex or releasing cover-songs of dubious critical merit by way of extending their waning popularity. On the otherhand, on this unpredictable evidence, they might. True enough, the London trio have that same outrageous sense of spectacle and fondness for striking screaming metal poses and thrashing around like ghouls but that’s about where the similarity ends. The exploding theatre of gonzo noise-punk has just discharged and my bleeding ear-drums and testament to their worth; this is a serious band, as vital to the current musical climate as unseasonably warm spells in October and CS gases. In fact, For Screening Purposes Only should be to us what the Beastie Boys’ Licensed To Ill was to the eighties generation; full on riff-tackling, throat-bustin’, eye-poppin’, hip-hoppin’ hardcore.
In all likelihood you’ve probably already heard the sharp, unruly discharges that were the uptight ‘BOA VS Python’ and ‘Circle.Square.Triangle’ post-punk set-pieces, but then you probably heard them and thought they were one of either four things: a) The Rapture. b) Throbbing Gristle. c) PIL d) on drugs. If you chose any of them you were probably right, but you would also have been right if you’d also thrown in a dose of Poison, a sprinkling of The Futureheads, a souson of Motley Crüe, a spoonful of thrash-metal and a generous smattering of disbelief.
Produced by the eccentric James Ford of the psychedelic pop experimentalists, Simian (you’re surely heard ‘La Breeze’, yeah?) and the increasingly relevant Simian Mobile Disco For Screening Purposes Only meshes a dense prickly wire-ball of sounds and clever devices from organs, military drums, distressed industrial noises, thrash riffs, monstrous vocal gurning, freaky electronica and deeply infectious anthems. If ‘Pull The Lever’ or ‘Maintain The Focus’ fail to make you go out and doff a policeman, nothing will.
Test Icicles is a shit name for a band. But this is a shit generation. Who better to provide the soundtrack?