���Wait, what? Two totally unrelated bands Flesh World? You might have noticed that Planned Obsolescence 7" that I had on a new arrivals list from a couple of months ago from an Australian band called Flesh World. Then along comes another Flesh World, this one from the San Francisco area, with a new record on Iron Lung that sounds completely different, but also completely fantastic. I usually get pretty irritated when I come across this sort of thing; with the omnipresent oracle of Google at our greasy fingertips, there's little excuse for bands to cop the same band name nowadays. But what to do when both bands end up knockin' my socks off? At least there's no chance of confusing 'em, musically; the moody anxiety-attack of this EP is about as far from the blitzoid thrash of the Aussie Flesh World as you can get.

��� So, this Flesh World features various members of Needles, Limp Wrist and other veteran outfits, and A Line In Wet Grass is a follow-up to a recent full length on La Vida Es Un Mus; the 7" delivers two songs of fantastic, furiously driving post-punk gloom that sunk its delicate fangs into me as soon as the a-side title track kicked in with its rocking mid-tempo propulsion and moody melody, the sound awash in ethereal vocals and chiming guitar noise, fusing a cloudy, almost shoegaze-esque wave of reverb-drenched sound to throbbing bass and vaguely motorik punk. It's hard not to reach for classic 80s-era bands for reference points in trying to describe this, but for some reason I'm having a harder time trying to pinpoint the antecedents for Flesh World USA's sound; I can make out some echoes of both Joy Division and early Christian Death in both this and "Not A Soul"'s brattier, punkier pulse, but both of these tunes have a certain ghostly poppiness to them (as well as a liberal amount of squalling noisiness towards the close of each) that make 'em one of the more unique sounding post-punk/gloom rock/death rock throwbacks I've heard lately, and I can't shake 'em out of my head. Gotta get my hands on their album for sure. Limited to five hundred copies, presented in a felt-weave cardstock sleeve, and comes with a digital download.