***1/2 Skeleton Key

SKELETON KEY

(Motel)

Skeleton Key were formed just two years ago in New York, but this debut EP captures them already fully realized, with intuitive razor-sharp focus. Theirs is an electro-charged underworld echoing with the distant clang of organic-industrial claustrophobia, where morticians are scared of corpses, emotional freakshows erupt at carnivals, and characters find themselves plagued by a suffocating dreaminess.

"The World's Most Famous Undertaker" and "The Spreading Stain" weld Cop Shoot Cop-style junkyard/scrap-metal percussion and bass-heavy rhythmic thunder to the kind of streamlined, tension-streaked post-hardcore harmonies that Jawbox used to excel at. "Solitaire" waxes weighty and ominous -- a throbbing doom-stricken bass line punctuated with a syncopated clatter, then an explosive headrush chorus catchier than any of that "as-seen-on-TV" Filter dreck. Unlike the Fisher-Price industro-metal clone crowd, Skeleton Key use found-object percussion and weird sound-collage sample loops as context, not foundation. There's a chaos lurking around the edges and in the margins without overshadowing what promises to be one of the year's most impressive rock debuts.

-- Carly Carioli

(Skeleton Key join Railroad Jerk upstairs at the Middle East this Friday, November 1.)