Maybe someday Test Icicles will get that unexpected burst of attention. Whether it through some strange trending sensation on TikTok, or a featured song in a very popular film or advert on the TV. Whatever happens. It would be nice. I remember initially being really turned off by the band when the first came round in 2005 with ‘Circle. Square. Triangle’. I was 10 at that point and thought it was a bunch of noise. But then my sister got the band’s album as a loan from a friend later on that year. I still didn’t get it. But, from what I remember, she did. And I particularly remember her spontaneously busting out lyrics from ‘Catch It!’ and ‘Sharks’, which as you can see, is today’s subject.

For Screening Purposes Only, Test Icicles’ one and only album, carried a name taken from the 1999 film Thicker Than Water, in which the phrase would appear onscreen whenever any violence happened. Never seen it, just going by what Wikipedia says. So in my head, I’m thinking that the three member must have been into films, they must have watched Jaws one day and, with a spark of inspiration, got to writing a new song. You won’t find official sources to back this up, so I’m going with this until that changes. ‘Sharks’, written by Sam Mehran or ‘Sam E Danger’ as he went by in the band, is about… well, sharks. Particularly how frightening they are. Maybe Mehran had a nightmare about being attacked by one. Though there might be a whole metaphor I’m missing out on here. All these theories I have, I mean, they sound plausible. They may be completely wrong too. Anyone out there, please correct me if so.

The track has a hidden introduction at the end of the song that precedes it on the album. A definitely Jaws-inspired motif played on a bass guitar is joined by a programmed drum pattern before launching into the official start of the song, a minor-key surf rock riff that properly gets the serotonin going. Mehran, Devonte Hynes and Rory Atwell bark out the track’s opening words, ‘Sharks. Sharks. Bite. Kill. Sharks.’ And a lot of screaming ensues. There’s plenty of that throughout actually. But things change musically from one section to the next. The surf-rock vibe switches out to a slower, more creeping part after what I guess you call the chorus. The song doesn’t really have one. But then after the sort of glitchy instrumental break, the initial riff comes in with a vengeance and brings it all to definitive close. Very impactful. The music’s better than the description.