Flingco is probably best known for issuing the Wrnlrd albums and that awesome Black Box drone-machine, but the label's tastes do run beyond the parameters of blackened industrial loops and avant-garde black metal as is evidenced by this 7"/digital release from the San Francisco trio Dead Meat that came out on Flingco towards the end of '10. I sat around on this for awhile, but was knocked out when I finally got around to spinning this baby; Dead Meat's sound is a mix of the slow, hammering rock you'd get from Am Rep and Sub Pop back around 1991 and a psychedelic haze that gives it it's own particular flavor, along with a knack for dark and powerful melody, which every song on this Ep is in possession of.

First, the title track. "The King" introduces itself with a lumbering hardcore bass riff and galloping drums that are both seething and subdued at first, then lurches into a blown out heaviness that will have any diehard Am Rep raising their fist to the heavens. The band hammers out this slinky distorted groover for just a couple minutes, but it's a solid fix of old style bludgeon-rock glazed in creepy reverb, just the way that I like it. On the other side, the band bangs out two songs, starting with the pummeling grunge/noise anthem "Electric Head", and followed by the the slower, heavier "Rubber Snake", a lysergic dirge whose hook is still coiling itself 'round my brain well after the turntable has stopped spinning.

The record also includes a digital-only album of early material from Dead Meat appropriately titled Early Recordings that offers more of their heavy, jangly, psych-damaged noise rock. Limited to 500 copies.