Noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells ready to shred Glasgow and Edinburgh venues on UK tour
The pair return to the UK to promote latest album Reign of Terror
When describing New York duo Sleigh Bells, some accurate adjectives might include: ‘weird’, ‘jarring’, ‘obnoxious’, but perhaps also ‘joyous’, ‘triumphant’ and ‘oddly beautiful’. It’s this juxtaposition that makes their collective sound hard to nail down and their actions even tougher to predict.
On their second album, aptly-titled Reign of Terror, the pair have turned up the volume, the intensity and the hooks and filtered it all through an 80s metal time machine. The result is a cocky, metal-studded fist-pumper, but with plenty of substance underneath the razor-wire noise.
Live, the duo bring the party with a pungent, smoke-machine-clogged atmosphere built on bareknuckle electronic aggression, prowling Van Halen-esque shredding and sickly sweet vocals courtesy of singer, Alexis Krauss. Anyone familiar with Floridian hardcore troupe, Poison the Well, might well recognise guitarist and Sleigh Bells instigator, Derek E. Miller too.
His confrontational guitar-work is at the white-hot core of SB’s music, but as shown by album opener ‘True Shred Guitar’, there is a sense of humour and cocksure satisfaction at play too when doling out glam-metal levels of squealing distortion. The band play Glasgow and Edinburgh back to back in support of Reign of Terror, so expect to be danced to death.
Sleigh Bells play Oran Mor, Glasgow on Tue 21 Aug; The Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Wed 22 Aug. Reign of Terror is out now on Mom+Pop Records.