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Album Review
by SashaS
2-2-2005
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| Biffy Clyro's 'Infinity Land' revisited |
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Biffy Clyro: 'Infinity Land'
(Beggars)
Biffy Clyro - re-enlarging sonorous dictionary
Although this album was recommended as a worthy choice for a save-face pressie - alongside all the raving about the band’s gig - just before Xmas urging you to gladden someone’s miserable set of gifts, we decided to return to Biffy Clyro’s ‘Infinity Land’, for two reasons: it is being released across Europe [although out in the UK since the beginning of October] and it is a bloody good album. Probably one of the best any Brit-musos have produced over the past several years.
Biffy Clyro aren’t your average rock band. First, they are prolific: three albums in as many years. Second, they have a lot of ideas. Third, they rock - swell, splendidly, exceptionally... The Scottish trio know what it takes and they’ve got it. On record. Perhaps - live even more, they appear anointed by destiny to be doing this. They sound seriously baaad. And acutely brilliant.
‘Infinity Land’ looks like a proof that Biffy Clyro’s is a seemingly endless well of tunes that rock bodies, roll souls and ‘funk’ up the rest of one’s system. And, it doesn’t obey any rules, it doesn’t go for the predictable songwriting tools as verse/chorus/verse/middle eight/chorus formula here; it is more like sonic sabotage with waves of steaming guitars, pushing against more radical rhythms…
Kicking it in with the powerful ‘Glitter and Trauma’, it is a complex, intricate, weaving, build-up of a track that explodes like fireworks on a New Year’s Eve. The band uses the template of ‘Jurassic Rock’ as a launching pad for post-rock exploration while keeping it within the rock genre with a sharp ear on avant-garde. They even shift a gear on ‘Strung To Your Ribcage’, a f**ked up love song Foo Fighters could have canned if they had the interplay and adventure-in-sound craving this trio possesses.
‘My Recovery Injection’ uses an intriguing beat [mutated reggae?], it is the unhinged guitar that gives it flavour [whilst nodding appreciatively toward the Thurston Moore’s Sonic Youth-full riff-a-rama]. The parade of goodies continues down the listing with each and every song bringing something new, different, exciting… widening the vocabulary that’s being reduced and simplified over a long period.
Still, distortion and discordance never get in the way and their ability to write great melodies shines though. There is refined rawness, the dark rocking dives, headspinning alleyways you are led down to, an intelligently noisy set of tracks that never miss to provide something to singalong to. For sheer brutality, a tonal avalanche arrives with ‘Wave Upon Wave Upon Wave’ upon a delightfully complicated rhythm. An epic, a monster of a song Muse would kill to get their fingers around.
‘Infinity Land’ keeps one’s curiosity on alert, one’s attention focused and entertained from start to finish. Biffy Clyro aren’t your average rock band. And more bands of their ilk around would make us PDH! …Erm - pretty damn happy.
8+/10
Tour dates:
16 February - Music Hall, Aberdeen
17 February - Academy, Glasgow
18 February - Academy, Manchester
19 February - UEA, Nowrich
20 February - Wulfrun, Wolverhampton
22 February - Met University, Leeds
23 February - Coal Exchange, Cardiff
24 February - Anson Rooms, Bristol
25 February - Astoria, London
26 February - University, Southampton
SashaS
2-2-2005
Biffy Clyro’s album ‘Infinity Land’ is released across EU on 31 January 2005 by Beggars
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