A Case for Hatching: My Eulogy for Egg Punk Explained by Martin Meyer

In my very humble and correct opinion, egg punk has jumped the shark, and it's good that people are talking about it. Coneheads rule and will always rule school. Did we expect this sound to be inexhaustible?

A few more key points:

1. It’s cool and good that people are talking about what makes art good. Not everybody can be right about it, but having any sort of critical lens is the first step to breaking out of our little genre prisons. Hating on dorks can feel good, but in order to do that, you have to hate things, and that’s a waste of attention (mind juice) and creative energy (sex juice).

2. It’s not just egg punk that’s in the genre prison. We can and should live creative lives without painting by numbers. Inspiration requires a spirit.

3. Lumpy’s songwriting prescription is besides the point. Good things come from improv and accidents and the release of pure animal id. Blind contour drawing is great for this reason. Glossolalia is True Liberation^TM. Working hard on songs can be good too, but the Great Egg/Chain Debate is about product, not process. Lumpy is showing his ass a bit, but whatever ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Let the kids show their asses, I say!

4. So much of the egg punk over-saturation coincided with our Age of Over-Saturation. There’s too much of everything. Maybe it seems worse with egg punk because it’s fairly one-dimensional.

Hm, I dunno, these are just thoughts I had while avoiding my job. I’m gonna go listen to some egg punk now and staple my balls to a box of Twinkies.

Randall Excellent take, excellent book!

the ultimate snackrifice Yes! Things \emph{are} fucked. Makes sense that art should strive to be important. At the same time art is not particularly good at conveying complex analytic information. So if people focus instead on making art about emotions and other more human things that is still worthy of an honorable mention at least! We cant all be strawman army. Some of us just gotta noodle a bit too.

11th hour stubble They're a fun live band. I've seen them at Mosswood Meltdown, Gonerfest and in a club. They're playing Mosswood again this year. I'd say I enjoy them live more than on wax but they're def. not the only current band I feel that way about.

Randall

Edith says, “GIVE ME SOME EGGS!”

Nathan Loud So much of the egg punk over-saturation coincided with our Age of Over-Saturation. There’s too much of everything. Maybe it seems worse with egg punk because it’s fairly one-dimensional.

100%... i think that's what worked people up so much, the illusion that everything sounds like this-one-thing, when in a pre-2016 world you'd never even hear half the bands that sound alike, or they wouldn't exist because their influences would be broader and less funnelled through the hot labels/bands social media channels or whatever... it's funny too in that hardcore/chain punk whatever, has the exact same problem: how many d-beat photocopies are out there, but because it's steeped in a long-lasting tradition, you don't get that same visceral recoil.

it's actually really interesting how similar this whole thing is to what happened with dolewave over the years in australia. those early bands and recordings were really refreshing and cool to listen too, and sick to have this kind of gentle pop band playing next to a punk band, etc... but over-saturation really sank that ship.

but i think you're totally rightL these newly appearing micro-genres get to a point of over-saturation now, and that's when the industry starts to latch on and repackage them, creates the spotify playlist, plucks 'one new band' out of the mix and offers them a big touring deal, etcccc

Uptown ruler 666 420 I thought “egg” and “chain” were just memes. Very embarrassing for all parties involved

You're not the only one, I'm so naïve to all of this that I thought "egg vs. chain" was just a pre-pandemic meme as well!

Nathan Loud So much of the egg punk over-saturation coincided with our Age of Over-Saturation. There’s too much of everything. Maybe it seems worse with egg punk because it’s fairly one-dimensional.

This is exactly why I don't like egg punk.

Being one-dimensional and over-saturated in this day and age seems to be the criteria to get astronomical. This goes hand-in-hand with having a big Instagram following, cultivating a Spotify presence, et cetera. Egg punk is disseminated through these avenues. A lot of egg punk followers are quite young - people who have grown up on 'modern' social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, etc.). This includes me.

That being said - punching down by calling egg punk artists 'clueless' in [current year] is so silly - especially under the guise of 'protest, feeling, and expression in our community.' Despite it all, how the egg punkers are getting their music across is also a good frame of reference to get 'protest, feeling, and expression' across in the landscape we are currently in!

We can talk about how DIY is not what it was due to the music industry catching on, and subsequently fucking us over by way of middleman services, however that is a debate for another time...

re: oversaturation, i do think it's sort of interesting how excessively online music/people can result in genre acceleration. obv "the egg sound" predated the pandemic. and i'm not sure where i read this (some review -- sorry state or something?) but seems like a lot of eggy bands like prison affair grew out of 2020 pandemic bedroom recording and digital idea swapping. so you get these bands all riffing on the same idea in germany spain australia usa. i wonder if the feeling that it's all unmoored is in part that overly-digital element.

and yes, all of this is further facilitated role that spotify plays in scraping forums (probably this one!) for genre ideas, compiling them into playlists, and then feeding them back to listeners. in the liz pelly book she talks about this wrt the "lo-fi beats" scene which feels really similar to egg insofar as there was a creative origin that quickly got ground down into its most derivative elements. as mentioned above, there is nothing particularly new here in the history of music. but the speed and scale with which it happens does seem to leave something to be desired.

ratcharge The insular part of your point goes for large parts of society at this point i feel, unfortunately.

It kind of just seemed like an incendiary fun thing to say to promote a record, but ended up hurting people’s feelings. It does feel like Martin is punching down on Jack White. I understand why, but I always felt really uncomfortable being called egg punk. Until that spin article and now you can suck on these eggs. I guess I just came here to say buy my record.

Where does WEIRD PUNK fit into all of this? Someone needs to make a spreadsheet or at least a flowchart.

jeff g yeah I've heard quite a few people reference shitgaze but to me this feels more in line with weird punk. I feel weird punk became way more flooded with copycats and there were way more records that came out under that umbrella. Plus it was also made up of a lot of one person bedroom acts where the main focus seemed recording tricks over songs.

jeff g I definitely don’t really know what Egg Punk is but chop it up extensively regarding Weird Punk and Shit Gaze.

The Touch The Feel
for posterity's sake. Apparently, it was Kevin Failure

I'll rep Weird Punk to the grave. Not so for Mysterious Guy Hardcore.

It was the keyboardist of TV Ghost, he got into legal problems and really mellowed out.

I always thought dry-Roy ruled in the MGHC camp.

Where does the FNU Ronnies and clone sit in all this for everyone?

CLARKO

From the Permission EP to the This Is A Forest 7" has to be one of the top funniest followups in music.

Then you flipped to the B side and it is Lumbar Yard. jfc. wasn't the producer Sublime associated? I mean now i wouldn't complain about a sax solo ride out on certain songs, but for the preEggs then it was more frowned upon.

Nathan Loud So much of the egg punk over-saturation coincided with our Age of Over-Saturation. There’s too much of everything. Maybe it seems worse with egg punk because it’s fairly one-dimensional.

Egg punk's issue isn’t merely oversaturation, but the way it happened. It wasn’t so much that too many bands emerged, but that they all ended up sounding the same. The outsider spirit that once made it fresh and unpredictable has been flattened into an endless series of clichés. As a result, what began as a spontaneous movement has turned into a codified aesthetic—and when a style stops evolving, it ages rapidly.

Perhaps I’m over-analyzing a genre that, in the end, sounds like an alien short-circuiting on a drum machine. Regardless, the Coneheads remain the best.

The Touch The Feel From the Permission EP to the This Is A Forest 7" has to be one of the top funniest followups in music.

Then you flipped to the B side and it is Lumbar Yard. jfc. wasn't the producer Sublime associated? I mean now i wouldn't complain about a sax solo ride out on certain songs, but for the preEggs then it was more frowned upon.

Sorry, but who are we talking about here?

Mark Smith Dry Rot I believe

Shitgaze generation

Bought my VIP tix to the relaunched Scion Fest, sadly it is being held on the same weekend as the Corporate Retreat.

remember when the Termbo Gen X were so sadboi energy over Wavves actually becoming popular while them and their friends were the soCalled Shitgaze generation that a fraction of people knew or cared about. a ha ha now it is Millennials, this time with Gen Z Eggs

Johnny Sick Shitgaze generation

Of the bands mentioned on the cover I would say Psychedelic Horseshit, Pink Reason, TV Ghost (at least their early releases) and Nothing People hold up really well. TNV and Eat Skull are okay, but I don't need any of their records. Never listened to Factums and apart from the first couple of singles Blank Dogs quickly became formulaic and boring.

Which means Shitgaze > Egg Punk. However, there are some good bands from the "egg generation". Coneheads, Eric Nervous and Lumpy & The Dumpers are the first ones that come to mind.

While searching online for this Mr Egg that everyone hates, I discovered that James McDonald of British post punk greats The Fakes went on to produce techno under various pseudonyms. Mr Egg was one of them.

Gimmie Sopor I found the only comparison with egg punk was in how people felt weird about having a joke genre thrown around. Maybe weird ounk is better. Especially since I legit forgot that term.

Still think it is actually good to have these stupid terms b/c then idiot hicks like me or some european's like ratcharge can hear actually this shit!

Last night I got in a more "suburb life" friend's car and he was rocking egg punk spotify. Had to inform him of the online debate and he was basically bummed out by it.

Eat Skull are one of the best. Not good with words so I cannot say it so clearly, but they really try to go outside the box. Each song has a dofferent idea. The overall sound is their own and does not have a clear precendent (to my limited knowledge). Nowhere near the every song sounds the sameness of the better egg punk bands or the mid tier shit fi bands like Factums.

Gimmie Sopor I have the magazine with me. There is a five-page article on shitgaze. If you are interested, I can upload it-obviously it is in Italian.

The Factums I loved them at the time. Along with Nothing People and Pink Noise, they were among my favorite bands in the weird punk scene. Their debut album, "Alien Native," was released in 2004 as a self-produced CD-R, only to be reissued on vinyl in 2007 by the Siltbreeze label.

Their sound is dirty, dark and hypnotic, like a fever dream. They mix krautrock, post-punk and noise, with repetitive rhythms, grainy synths and guitars that sound like distant echoes of something eerie.

At times they are reminiscent of Chrome, for their psychedelic and alienating approach; in other tracks they evoke the industrial minimalism of early Cabaret Voltaire. But there is also a freer and more experimental soul, such as on the album Gilding The Lilies, which brings them closer to the sound collages of Throbbing Gristle.

paperhose Eat Skull are one of the best.

+1 on Eat Skull. I'm still a very big TNV fan, but I think Eat Skull shined the brightest in those shitgaze days. Even their "cleaned up" last record that they did on Woodsist is a standout from the time. In my opinion, at least.

If you haven't heard that Hole Class record (Beth from TNV & Rob from Eat Skull) I recommend. More acoustic and folky, but a good listen.

I haven't listened in forever but I really loved the first Factums single when it came out but the records after that didn't leave much of an impression. Nothing People were fantastic. I was really excited to see them live and it didn't translate very well, but I love the records.

As far as shitgaze goes Psychedelic Horseshit were great and those records still stand up. They had a reputation for being a mess live but were great everytime I saw them with the exception of once, and that one time was comically bad. I booked them at the bar I worked at and the bartenders were not amused. It would randomly be brought up at work after that as "the worst band I ever saw." Tyvek got lumped into the "shitgaze" scene but I think that was more the result of place and time than actual sound.

The MTV shitgaze SXSW I saw TV Ghost get their van repoed. One of them didn't get permission from their mom to go to SXSW but went anyways. The mom was upset so she got their van repossessed. They came out to load in their gear and a tow truck driver was getting ready to take it. He let them get the gear out before hauling it off. They played a great set. I remember talking to them afterwards and they were more focused on the fact the MTV had given them beer the night before than the fact they no longer had wheels and were 20 hours from home with all their gear.

paperhose Eat Skull are one of the best.

For reasons unknown, I mixed up Eat Skull with Little Claw. I'm not sure I've ever heard of Eat Skull, although I've been aware of them since the Termbo hype days. Will check em' out.

Randall "the worst band I ever saw." Tyvek

For a second or two I thought Tyvek were the worst band you ever saw, but I read too fast. Tyvek are the absolute best, killing it live and on record for almost 20 years now. Put on my fourth show with them last year and they are as good as ever. Such a nice bunch of people too, always a pleasure to hang out with them.

Gimmie Sopor for sure. I have never seen them anything less than stellar. Their set at the Corporate Retreat last year had me feeling about 15 years younger

Johnny Sick

please do upload.

I definitely would not have described Nothing People as shitgaze. They were like glam rock or whatever. Regardless, to paraphrse Casca, it was Termbo Rock to me.

As for NP, I like all of their stuff, but this is still to this day one of my favorite seven inchers of all time

Josh Hineni, hineni. Sadly, can't access the link to the article for some reason. I'm really curious though

The Touch The Feel please do upload