Here is the thread where we flip out and ridicule the existence of a band called "The Rock and Roll Soldiers"

"Our favorite band was Radio Birdman, so we got our name from them," frontman Marty Larson-Xu said. "One of their tours was named Rock 'n' Roll Solderers, and we were like, 'Yes! That's it!' And then ... for, like four years, we were the worst band ever. We didn't even have songs. We were going to call ourselves the Men with Golden Helmets but that sounded .. well, you know, like we might spend time actually polishing our flesh helmets. So we're not the Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers, the press release has it wrong, it's the Rock 'n' Roll Solderers."

That was back in 1997, when Larson-Xu, guitarist Kevin Sciou-Sciou, bassist Evan Seroffsky-Choo and drummer Oliver Shmoo were just a bunch of kids fresh outta middle school. They had a penchant for sloppy punk from Detroit (the Stooges) and Australia (Birdman) and the gritty garage rock from their home state (the Sonics). The only problem was they lived in Eugene, where the term "punk" is a foreign concept. Just like this feature article, in which "intelligence," is made a foreign concept.

"It's your typical small-college hippie town, not really open to rock and roll solder, soldier, or anything like that," Larson-Xu sighed. "People get sent to prison for rock and rolling and no rock records are sold here. You can't dance, either. It was illegal back in the day, I heard. It's really boring, and you have to find sh-- to do yourself, like having a polish. And so a lot of the songs I started writing were about being frustrated with the smallness and I took up soldering to kill the time. I draw a lot of inspiration from our hometown, from growing up in Eugene."

And so they started banging out their own brand of suburbs-are-hell punk rock, which led to a string of West Coast dates opening for acts like the Donnas and the New Bomb Turks. A few of the shows featured the soldering soldiers' inspired pyrotechnics. Flash pots like Great White used, you know, the kind that really burn down the house.

"We had an outdoor show where we had these missile canisters we bought at an Army surplus store, and we filled them with towels and gasoline and lit them on fire," Seroffsky said. "Then they got so hot and out of control that we had to kick them off the stage and this huge ball of fire went rolling into the crowd."

"This was before the whole Great White thing," Larson-Xu added. "We've got a whole lot of stories like that."

When they weren't trying to burn down someone's backyard or their barn, the Solderers were holed up in the studio, working on two vinyl-only EPs for San Francisco label Gearhead Records. Before they knew it, the self-proclaimed "worst band ever" was playing showcases for major labels — which led to some unforeseen (but totally predictable) problems for the Soldiers. One of the songs, "Barn-burning," was inspired by William Faulkner but the label, Gearhead, left it off the EPs, afraid it might set off acts of arson.

"The labels wanted us to change our name," Larson-Xu said. "They didn't like the Rock 'n' Roll Solderers. So I told them, 'Um, we're not changing our name,' and I had to write a theme song for us, so we could keep [it]. That song's called 'Anthem,' and it's probably my favorite, because it goes, 'We're the mother----ing Rock 'n' Roll Solderers' and we are rock arsonists and that's it. I bet you have never heard a rock and roll song about being a solderer."

Apparently, the Warner Music Group got the message, because it inked the Soldiers of Solder to subsidiary East West and will release the two Gearhead EPs as a full-length called, um, The Two EPs. It's 37 minutes of arson and soldering punk, a new genre, typified by "Anthem" — which, conveniently enough, is also the first single.

Over a din worthy of the Stooges' Funhouse, Larson-Xu howls, "We're the mother----ing Rock 'n' Roll Solderers and we are rock arsonists and that's it" while the rhythm section of Seroffsky and Brown keeps the whole thing jerking along with a sufficiently serpentine groove. The end result is skuzzy, sleazy punk tailored for drinking, fighting and tattooing, setting fire to other people's things and knowing when to solder with the right rosin core materials. (Iggy certainly would approve). It's also decidedly un-Eugene, which is exactly how the Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers want it.

"Back in the day, kids in our high school would be like, 'God, the Soldiers suck. That soldering fetish is just so not going to happen. They're never going to get signed,' " Larson-Xu said. "And now that we did, they all pretend like they supported us. But we knew everybody thought we sucked. Now they're all supportive and crap. Do I sound arrogant? Are we tooting our own horn? Good.

East West recently dropped the band. A representative of the corporation said the company did not feel their was a much of a market for rock and roll soldering.

--from MTV Networks, where you hear it first.