PUNCTUALITY HAS NEVER been my strong point. I run up to the door of Bottom of the Hill – no less than 25 minutes late for the Boy Explodes' scheduled opening set for Manitoba – and was relieved to find them still sound checking. "More reverb and a little bit of delay," singer-guitarist Shane Frink says into the mic, squinting across the still-empty club at the sound person. "More death rock. All death rock." Lookswise, Frink, one of the promoters of on-again, off-again throwdown Death Rock Booty Call, bassist-keyboardist-gadgeteer Tomo, and drummer Ryan Brundage make an unlikely trio of death rockers. Frink sports plaid pants, a checkered guitar strap, and a barely stubbled dome; Tomo's shirt reads "Cat: The Other White Meat," and their instruments, with the exception of the keyboards and electronic doohickeys, are all white: white Strat, white Jazz Bass, and white drum kit.

Far from being disappointed by the lack of ghoulish accoutrements, I find it refreshing. While their self-titled EP (Death Rock Booty Call) evokes the gloomy, reverbed-out ghosts of Bauhaus, the Cure, and Joy Division, as well as Gary Numan and even Devo, it's pleasant to see a band concentrate on playing dark, emotional mood music without worrying about looking the part.

I'd caught up with Frink after the Your Enemies Friends show at Cafe du Nord a few days prior, where he told me the Boy Explodes' material had already moved beyond the multitextured melancholy of the EP, which was recorded in May, into more of a "dance punk" feel. And while this punk can't dance his way out of a wet paper sack, I see what he means as Brundage starts pounding the drums over the duh-duh-dump sequenced beat of their opening tune, "Chauney Punk." Frink runs the fretboard of his Fender up and down the mic stand à la Thurston Moore, swaddling the slowly arriving audience in a tight blanket of noise, while Tomo waves his arms up and down lethargically in a sort of lackluster go-go dance. "Disco punk – what a fucking joke," the lyric goes, near as I can tell.

And while I can respect the impetus to poke a little fun at oneself, disco punk may indeed be the final frontier of modern musical fusion: if death metal and emo can shack up to give unholy life to "screamo," then maybe a potbellied pig and an elephant can make babies after all. Thankfully, the Boy Explodes stick closer to the punk side of the fence. I much prefer Frink's understated, melancholic drone to any "I Will Survive"-style howling. "Mirror," the second song in a set free of any EP tracks, swirls with jagged, rusty metal guitar and wind tunnel gusts of distorted keyboard noise, before slowing to an atmospheric break with sampled piano. Underneath the distorto duck quacks, ticky-tick of the high hat, and the drawn-out, generally unintelligible vocals on "Thursday," it's quite clear something evil is going down.

Dance punk, at least the Boy Explodes' version of it, is no flamboyant aviator-glasses-and-cocaine version of celebrating life – buried beneath the layers of distortion and delay, lurk an edginess and tension. However, though the Joy Division bass tones add to the lush, velveteen depression, their sound successfully skirts the borders of the out-and-out morose. And while it doesn't take a musical genius to reference long-dead Ian Curtis's long-dead band, the homage is nothing as obvious and uninvigorating as New York City alterna-darlings Interpol's.