The death ray never came to fruition outside the pages of sci-fi novels by the likes of Alfred Noyes and Alex Raymond, and that's probably for the best. However, the principle did manifest in other forms of sonic warfare, many of which appear in our everyday lives without our noticing. Late at night outside grocery stores, malls, and other prime lollygagging spots, an alarm known as SonicScreen, or the Mosquito, blares at a frequency only teenagers can hear in order to stop them loitering in the vicinity. You get the impression that these alarms are designed to ward off exactly the kind of kids that are going to find release in the debut album from Australian duo DZ Deathrays, where heshing, BMXing, and making yourself sick on lurching rollercoasters are a way of life, when you're not bumming around on street corners. And if there were ever a teen colony they wanted to keep free of adults, then Bloodstreams would prove ample weaponry.
As may be apparent, Bloodstreams' principal methods of assault are volume and vitriol. DZ Deathrays formed to play house parties, and they say they'll "most likely end at one," too. It's not hard to imagine the floor falling out beneath them as they unleash one of the mighty "OWWWWW"s that blast through the end of a number of their songs like a sonic turbo boost button. DZ Deathrays' house is a place you'll want to go, and it's on a street close to that of Japandroids' Celebration Rock. If you hit up David Prowse and Brian King's joint to hug your friends in a seething sweaty mess and declare how much you love each other, then you'll go to Shane Parsons and Simon Ridley's to smash the furniture with the force of everyone who ever wronged you fuelling the punch.
Sound unpleasant? Once you unearth them from beneath 12 layers of fuzz and squall, the main emotions on display are spite and bitterness. Opener "Teenage Kickstarts" sets the tone: "Broke my bones in catastrophe/ Broke my heart in a heartbeat/ I've been held down, kept stripped back/ Take my chance, yeah/ Bound to fall apart/ Can't break my kickstart." DZ Deathrays are on a path to self-destruction, with only their copies of You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, HLLLYH, and Be Your Own Pet's debut in hand. "Teenage Kickstarts" bowls along as if held together by spunk and iron filings, lurching like a ship on the high seas into a batshit mental breakdown at the end. "Trans Am" is less aggressive sonically, but its only lyrics are, "Dead or alive/ Dead or alive/ Give the wings to me and drive into the sun."
But if we're going to hell in a handbasket, DZ Deathrays know that the dirt-track ride there has to be fun. The dumbly named "Dollar Chills" could be an ode to the vacuousness of the Patrick Bateman era, a beefy bronco lurch setting off ricocheting video game effects, eventually flooding itself with tidal sweeps of cymbal crash and guitar feedback. There's a rival gang in pursuit on "L.A. Lightning"-- "Keys in the car running/ Can't beat the BMX"-- which is the most direct crib of DFA1979's upward tugged strut here. Plenty of these songs have the same structure, and are just a riff a few frets removed from the previous track, but they're executed with the impulse that makes you go on the same roller coaster 12 times in a row.
There are more adult moments on Bloodstreams, but they're the least fun parts. Following "Dollar Chills", "Dumb it Down" is striking in its sparseness, a juddering electronic stutter with a little Depeche Mode on its side and a borderline emotional refrain, but it lacks in the thrills so readily available elsewhere. "Witchcraft" feels like it's seeking some sort of map or guidance on the road to ruin, coming off too in hock to the traditions of Black Sabbath in comparison to the rest of the record's bratty, pillaging ways.
The finest song here, "Gebbie Street", holds its hands behind its back for the first minute and a half, Parsons coolly observing, "Your eyes like diamond, speckled gold/ You know our bodies make the right conversation," over a tight, swaggering snare click, before a great whiplashing "YOWWWW!" turns the song inside out, and "Make me feel explosions in my blood" becomes "in my BLAAAAAAH!" Bloodstreams is the kind of record that makes you feel explosions in your "blah," a giant loogie hock against the pricks that perpetuate the everyday. If a DZ video doesn't get a spot on the reincarnated "Beavis and Butthead", an opportunity will have been missed. Like that high-pitched whistle that SonicScreens play outside corner shops, there'll come a time when what DZ Deathrays are doing no longer resonates with you. But for now, it's more than worth going deaf to.
