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Sleigh Bells

As Labor Day crawled towards the finish line, Sleigh Bells came out of left field with news of a new album, and it’s coming a lot sooner than you’d expect. On October 8 the noisy duo will release their third album, Bitter Rivals, via Mom + Pop. It’s the quick follow-up to last year’s Reign Of Terror.

They’ve released the title track as the album’s first single via a music video that they band directed themselves, along with a little help from The Creators Project.

What originally drew me to Sleigh Bells was how they kept it simple and made insanely loud music that flat out rocked. It worked because they had one goal to accomplish: rock out in glorious fashion. And they did.  But new single “Bitter Rivals” just seems to be trying to hard to do multiple things at once, leaving it feeling flat. The chorus seems to be searching for some mainstream appeal, but it came off as lazy to me. It seems jumbled and all over the place. Where is the simple goodness?

I still dig Sleigh Bells and hope the rest of the album fairs better, but I’m not too thrilled about this new one. Ironically, this will probably be their biggest hit yet.

Check it out via the video below.


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