Kevin Bronson on October 12th, 2017

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What’s for dinner? Hopefully, it’s better than what’s coming out of the TEST kitchen, unless you’re of the opinion that anything is palatable so long as you add enough hot sauce.

While the Los Angeles alt-rock trio’s gooey video for their song “Entertainment Tonight” turns opening a can into a horror film, their debut album “Brain In / Brain Out” is a lot more appetizing. To review: Houston natives Blake Stokes (vocals, guitar) and Wayne Meza (bass) joined up with drummer Morgan Ponder in L.A., the trio living and working in a lockout in gritty, industrial Vernon before releasing an EP last year. They unveiled the album’s lead track “7th Street Metro” in January, “Hallways” a couple of months later, and have been inflicting hearing loss in venues small and smaller most of this year.

Their sound is a happy collision of proto-punk, Brit-rock, post-punk and new-generation garage-rock — at once abrasive and catchy. “Entertainment Tonight” has a big chorus, if you dig singing along with “Spotlight shining on your bathroom floor.” Says Stokes: “‘Entertainment Tonight’ was an attempt at writing an Oasis song that ended up sounding like the 1990s covering the Pixies, to me anyway. The lyrics all came at once and touch on everything from my love of getting fucked up in the mid ’00s to my career as a child actor in the ’90s. And it’s got a drum solo.” To us, that sounds like all the ingredients.

“Brain In / Brain Out” is out Nov. 10.

||| Watch: The video for “Entertainment Tonight”

||| Also: Stream the song here, along with “Hallways”

||| Live: TEST celebrate their album release with a show Oct. 18 at the Hi Hat, along with Facial and Cool Ghouls. Tickets.