"Opposites" Album Preview - Biffy Clyro

"Opposites" Album Artwork.

This month, Scottish rock giants, Biffy Clyro will be releasing their sixth album “Opposites”. Over the past ten years, Biffy have experimented with many different instruments and playing techniques on their albums from playing around with synths and drum machines to combining heavy guitar with beautiful string arrangements. Over the years, Simon, Ben and James have amazed their fans with overwhelming music and now the question amongst fans is “How can they make it any better?”

We have already had a good taster of what is going to be on the album, during the summer, the band released their first single in four years, “Stingin’ Belle” which created buzz all over the music scene with amazing riffs and the use of bagpipes in the instrumental. More recently, last month Biffy released what will be the 2^nd single, “Black Chandelier” which when compared to “Stingin’ Belle” and to a lot of their other songs could be called pop-rock and tame because of the simpler 4/4 arrangement and did make the fans question whether Biffy were coming back as the Biffy they remembered. I was actually very happy with “Black Chandelier” after a while because I accepted it for one of Biffy’s love songs which made me think of “Blackened Sky”, their debut album which is made up of songs for his future wife.

From both of these singles it is hard to tell what is to come next month from the band and so, to get an idea of what will be on the album, we need to look at Biffy’s performances over the last year. Because over 2012, Biffy have been in California recording, they haven’t had much time to stop working and appear at festivals. The Scottish rocker’s most famous festival event this year was Download at Donnigton Park alongside AC/DC and the Prodigy. They also were part of the line-up for this year’s iTunes Festival and from these performances you start to get a nice feel for the album.

Looking back to last autumn, when Biffy Clyro did the iTunes Festival, you can see that Biffy haven’t lost anything when it comes to putting on a good show – they are still the guys who go on stage with no shirts on and all wear converses and still prance about the stage. The only new thing I can see is Simon has a new guitar and James has a new bass.

One thing that comes across quite strong is they’re going back to their obscure days when it comes to song titles for example new songs include “Modern Magic Formula” and “Sounds Like Balloons” which definitely have a “There’s No Such Thing As A Jaggy Snake” ring to them and has a ring of the old Biffy.

Over the years, Biffy started writing nice easy songs with a structure that was easy to follow but from what I’ve heard they’re going back to the days when half the songs didn’t really make sense but somehow worked. For me that is quite exciting because for a while, I thought they were going to start trying to please everybody and go all namby-pamby for the sake of a few more album sales but they’re not (I hope).

As always, a lot of the new songs seem to be about Simon and his wife and their relationship over the years which is nice because one of the things I love about Biffy Clyro is that the fans seem to know the ins and outs of the band’s lives (especially Simon’s) because every song seems to be autobiographical - for example, “Folding Stars” was written when Simon’s Mum died and the new songs are like the latest instalment of their lives.

So onto putting all of this together and getting a picture from the pieces we have so far. I feel the new songs fit in with the old and that although they are trying to make the sound fresh, they are taking little bits from the very old (past “Puzzle”) days and explains why in their performances over the past year, they have played more songs from “Infinity Land” and “Blackened Sky”. Honestly, I don’t really know what to expect later on this month, there are a lot of songs to guess about because it’s going to be a double album but I think we can safely say they will be staying a gem to the fans and won’t be going all “mainstream” on us all.

All I can really say is be excited about this album if you’re a fan or not because it really looks like it’s going to be one of the rock albums of the year.