{grate 3.5}

Critically lauded New York quintet O’Death has released its second LP of farmhouse creepers just in time for the Halloween festivities. True to their name — which puts a gothic spin on the Irish-American surname — Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin is a full-blown hoedown held in the quietest of nights by insomniatic old folks with perdition on their minds.

Frenzied fiddles and dissonant banjos — pierced by Greg Jamie’s bluegrass chanting — scratch and thud their way across bipolar tracks that update mood and tempo at every turn. It’s not hard to see past the frenetic rockers’ rural influences and corral them more toward the psychoward — but that’s exactly what they’re going for.

O’Death’s lyrics further kin them to horror-movie soundtracks. “Mountain Shifts” hears Jamie gently purring, “Her hair lays violent/ Dead in the streets”; goosebumps spread like wildfire as he urges all with the malevolence of a guiltless murderer, “I hope that she’s peaceful/ Wherever her body may be.” The grim Hawthornian hubbub reaches near-laughable levels, but is pulled off with such honest fervor that we’re all but spellbound by the hysteria.

Halloween may be over, but a warning to all you hipster pussies out there: Don’t listen to Broken Hymns at night. No matter how much we may roll our eyes at its morbid fascinations, O’Death’s sophomore record has us jumping at shadows — clearly, the stuff of nightmares.

O’Death will play live at the Casbah on Nov. 23.