Band Name: Egg Drop Soup
Vital stats: EDS is an inyourface, unapologetic, all-womxn alt-punk trio…preparing for the end of the patriarchy (source: official bio)
Latest release: Five-track “Eat Snacks and Bleed” EP released on Christmas Day, no doubt sending Hallmark movies everywhere scuttling into the shadows and hiding for the rest of the winter
One sentence EP review: EDS have taken their scrappy punk tunes into new territory with injections of doom metal, power pop, and psych rock which should provide listeners with years of immunity to all things lame and oppressive
Two songs & music videos that a generation ago would be all over college radio and 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation and probably would have the band opening for L7 by now: “Hard To Hold On” and the non-EP single “Subdivision”
First track of the new EP described in real time in one long run-on sentence: The opening minute of “Rank Heavy Metal Parking Lot” certainly lives up to its name, or maybe it’s more like the sound of rifling through an older brother’s or cool uncle’s record collection: starting with some lighter-waving Eddie-esque Eruptions and soon switching over to some Paranoidish head-banging power chords before settling into a more typical mid-tempo Sabbath stomp, but then when the vocals enter the song goes a little bit sideways into spacey psych-rocklandia with lyrics about hands and eyes and heads and beds shuffled into unlikely configurations ending with a repeated refrain about “waiting a lifetime” and seriously this song is starting to remind me of the Breeders’ “Safari” with its righteous riffage and brief bout of shreddage (Tanya D!) and hypnotic reverb-laden Deal sister harmonizing (a song whose music video is an homage to Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” hmm…) and then finally we’re back to the faster second riff and it’s all done in less than three minutes—all of which reminds me of the brace-faced redhead with the red cup in the actual movie “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” (go out and track down a bootleg copy on VHS if you haven’t seen it already) who says she wants to jump Rob Halford’s bones—purr purr sweetly deluded and extremely wasted feathered redheaded girl—and really when you think about it this song seems like it should be her soundtrack what with its frenzied hormonal drive and addled thoughts and unfulfilled longings, with our hero bravely making her way in the boyzone of the rank heavy metal hesher parking lot on her own terms and with unrestrained agency; I’ll bet that the red cup girl turned out just fine even if it took a lifetime. (Jason Lee)