New York outfit O’Death’s third LP, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin, feels like a giddy junkyard hoedown, from the panicked fiddle screeches of opener “Lowtide” to the celebratory gallop of closer “Lean-To.” At times it sounds morose or contemplative, but underneath the melancholy is a gospel fervor—bashed from paint buckets, banjos, guitars and anything else in kicking distance—that defines their sound. Since 2007’s buzzed-about Head Home, the quintet, which contains vocalist/guitarist Greg Jamie, vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Gabe Darling, fiddle player Bob Pycior, bassist Newman and drummer David Rogers-Berry, has evolved the possessed americana-meets-gypsy-punk of recent years into a more urgent, unrelenting celebration of life, death and everything in between.

For their latest album, the musically diverse Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skins—which O’Death coproduced with Alex Newport (Two Gallants, the Locust)—they’ve recreated their live fervor in the studio. And although it may be the same lineup, the band that plays on Broken Hymns isn’t the same ensemble that formed in 2003 at college. In that time, they’ve evolved. “After Head Home, we only wrote three songs that year,” says Rogers-Berry. “By the end of that year, I was like, I don’t know if I can do this project. This is making me really crazy and sick and I don’t like it. As soon as we started writing new music again, I was like, That’s why we have this band. Playing music is the only thing that matters to me.”

They’ve grown up a little, but haven’t lost the underlying longing or the unruly jubilation in their songs. Jamie’s vocals sound more confident, even when singing lyrics like “I’m gonna leave you when the morning comes” on “Lean-To” or the infectious “hold on” hook on “Fire On Peshtigo,” which is based on a real fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871. The songs were written over the three years since they recorded Head Home, and each one shows a different side of the band as they toured almost nonstop.