Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions

I love Biffy Clyro, I have since the first time I heard 57. Their first three albums (Blackened Sky, The Vertigo Of Bliss and Infinity Land) are absolutely stunning, filled with perfectly written post-hardcore songs only kept from the attentions of mainstream music fans by their spiky and comparatively awkward style.

Then Puzzle was released and Biffy seemed to have lost that something special that marked them apart from other alt-rock bands. Abandoning their unique sound for one far more conventional may have made Puzzle by far their most popular album, and although there are brief glimpses of Biffy’s brilliance I was hugely disappointed, a feeling that was only made worse by the release of the genuinely boring Mountains.

So now a new Biffy album is imminent, entitled Only Revolutions, but have they managed to redeem themselves? Yes and no. The album opens with The Captain which has been floating around the web for a while now, and I still cannot understand why such a bad song deserves such a good intro. I’m a sucker for brass sections but not even the addition of brass can detract from the fact that this song makes me angry.

Luckily enough track two, That Golden Rule, is one of the best Biffy songs I’ve heard since the pre-Puzzle era, however the ending is marred by the unnecessary use of strings over a perfectly good guitar riff. I don’t know what it is with Biffy and his new obsession with strings but they were all over Puzzle (I honestly though 9/15ths was a joke track the first time I heard it), presumably to pad out otherwise very thin songs. Thankfully the amount of operatic bullshit has been severely toned down on Only Revolutions, and despite the presence of The Captain and Mountains the album is a vast improvement on Puzzle.

There are faults with the album, mainly that the adventurous style that made the first three albums so great is still too absent, but there are some real standout tracks. Bubbles, although on the more conventional side, is supremely catchy and features Josh Homme providing one of his typically a-tonal guitar solos, Born On A Horse bears a large resemblance to the pseudo disco-rock style of the second Marmaduke Duke album and Cloud Of Stink reminds me of the Biffy I first fell in love with.

Only Revolutions is still weak when compared to the first three albums, but it is a vast improvement over Puzzle which is a step in the right direction. Just lay off the strings on the next album boys.

Marko