In what will make perfect sense to those who’ve heard Sleigh Bells’ third and latest record, Bitter Rivals, a lot of iconic acts end up being bandied about during a conversation with group cofounder Derek E. Miller.

The guitarist-producer behind the Brookyln-based duo is in an obviously excited mood when he picks up the phone at home. One minute he’s pledging his undying love for Alexis Krauss, singer of the noise-pop unit that he put together in 2008, and the next he’s on about how blessed he is to be paid to travel the world in a rock band.

But where Miller gets truly off-the-charts revved-up is when he’s talking music—no surprise, considering that Bitter Rivals is one of those records made for playing spot-the-homage.

Bring up, for example, the chainsaw-strength guitars that roar out of nowhere three quarters of the way through the blues-explosion banger “Tiger Kit”. Judged on his reaction, Miller is jacked that his pyrotechnics have been noticed, partly because it gives him the chance to talk about the inspiration.

“Thank you—I’m so psyched that you noticed that!” he gushes. “I think I have to credit Jimmy Page. I was listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin. I don’t really trust anyone who doesn’t like Led Zeppelin—not that I’m a rockist, because I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t love [Wu-Tang Clan’s] 36 Chambers either. But anyway, I did my fair share of time listening to Led Zeppelin this year, and Page is just one of those guys who I don’t even know what you can say about him. If I try and say something, I’ll just sound like an idiot. But yeah, that song definitely pays a huge debt to Jimmy Page.”

Miller’s name-checking doesn’t stop there. During his conversation with the Straight he brings up a laundry list of icons, crediting them for helping shape Bitter Rivals. Consider the nitro-fuelled hip-hop vibe that’s all over the record, from the classic-rock coloured “Sing Like a Wire” to the concussive “Love Sick” (the latter coming with a Terminator X shout-out). Guitars and distortion pedals might be Sleigh Bells’ preferred musical weapons, but Miller and Krauss clearly have more than a passing affection for beatbox-powered landmarks like Fear of a Black Planet and Licensed to Ill. “Some of the stuff that will be obvious to people is that there’s definitely a lot of Beasties, early Rick Rubin stuff, Bomb Squad, and Public Enemy that we were listening to,” Miller acknowledges.

As for the title track, which mixes hollow-point guitar violence with a chorus that’s part sweet soul sister and part satanic cheerleader? Think of the producer behind Thriller, who cast a shadow on the record not only sonically but in other ways as well.

“I read Quincy Jones’s autobiography, and that just blew my mind,” Miller says. “As both a human being and a record producer, he really opened my eyes to things. He talked about so many things, one of them being God’s divining rod. He knows he’s on the right track when he gets goosebumps—he calls it God’s divining rod. He’s like, ‘I don’t need to play it for anybody, and I don’t need to bounce it off anybody to find out what they think.’

“It’s the equivalent of gut instinct for me,” he continues. “I know that feeling. When a new song is happening and starting to click, and you know it’s going to stick, I get ecstatic. It’s like a drug. There’s a chemical reaction inside my body where I get really hyper and euphoric. And after that, it’s bulletproof for me—no one can take that away.”

Other acts would help shape Bitter Rivals not sonically, but aesthetically.

“I was listening to a lot of vocal-group stuff, which is kind of strange,” Miller offers, citing Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. “Their early singles were just, like, two minutes and 10 seconds—no flab. Just really tough, badass with really nasty, nasty grooves. I love those records.”

All the above influences come together to create not only the best record of Sleigh Bells’ much-hyped career but also one of the great albums of the year. With Krauss actively encouraged to get involved in the writing process this time around, the two have retained the bombast of past releases but upped the accessibility factor. “To Hell With You” layers angelic neo-ambient vocals over a baroque-pop backdrop, while “Young Legends” takes folk-pop and retools it for hockey rinks. Those who still want to be knocked flat on their ass can proceed directly to the mashup maelstrom that is “You Don’t Get Me Twice”, which crams all the record’s influences into a three-minute carpet bombing, capping things off with a guest appearance by what seems to be that thing in the cellar in The Evil Dead.

That Miller is justifiably jacked about all this speaks volumes about his headspace. When we last heard from Sleigh Bells on 2012’s Reign of Terror, the singer was in a dark place, reeling from his father’s death in a motorcycle accident and his mother’s cancer diagnosis. Today, he’s relieved to report that the dark clouds that were in place since the group’s 2010 debut, Treats, have lifted. His excitement about life, evidently, transcends Sleigh Bells.

“I came out of it—it’s as simple as that,” Miller says candidly. “It took me four years. It started with my father’s death, which was June 25 of ’09. I was numb, in shock, making Treats, and then the second we finished we went on tour. Then my mother was diagnosed with cancer. What was a very happy, solid family was destroyed, overnight at first, and then in the months that followed. It took me years to rebound, and this record was a huge part of that. The story of this record is me finally crawling out of a deep and dark hole.”