The Shackeltons

Unsolicited advice for all bands: If your big break is winning a battle of the bands competition, don't tell anyone. Best to make music journos work for their snark. In or around their home of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the Shackeltons won one such Iliadic struggle, but it couldn't have been a fair fight. With sharp and tensile rhythms à la the Pixies, stampeding Brit rock guitars à la the Libertines, the sonic paranoia of the Killers and the schizoid howls of lead singer Mark Redding, the band has mastered the post-punk vocabulary. On this year's self-titled album, however, the Shackeltons are still working out their collective anxiety of influence; more working-class-metal riffage and dense imagery, as on the solid single "Tremble," ought to do the trick.