Test Icicles must feel a little overlooked at the moment. Their buzz started building last summer when their track Boa Vs Python was made available at

their MySpace website. Then came the NME features and the tales of over-exuberant gigs, bloody injuries and onstage accidents.

With their love of pink trousers and post-Bloc Party haircuts, for a brief moment Test Icicles were The Next Big Thing.

Their debut album, For Screening Purposes Only, appeared at the back end of last year and promised to be either a complete mess or total genius, working in thrash metal, punk and hip hop influences.

The reality was both, making it one of the most exciting albums of the year, and drawing a line between postpunk bands such as Franz Ferdinand and the rock theatrics of Muse.

So why, when it was all going so well, were Test Icicles playing to a couple of hundred people in the basement of a club at 11.30pm on a Wednesday night?

In the week that labelmates Arctic Monkeys look set to have the fastest-selling debut album of all time, Test Icicles were playing on a stage so cramped it made the Freebutt look like Wembley Stadium.

When the band took to the stage, it was clear the genes which came together to form the band are the same ones holding it back from greatness.

Sure, the guitars were visceral, the vocals a glorious demented scream and the interplay between Dev, Sam and Raary was enthralling. But when you set out to make a record more genre-mashing and noisy than ever before, sometimes the result is just noise.

On singles Circle Square Triangle and What's Your Damage the band sound like Bloc Party on speed but, in such a tiny space, the pop sensibilities struggled to appear.

The band relied on a drum machine rather than live drums, and this was their saving grace, giving those wild guitars direction.

It's not that Test Icicles can't go on to be one of the best bands of 2006, it's just that they're still one of the most interesting bands of 2005.