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Biffy Clyro 'Infinity Land'
Biffy Clyro aren’t your average rock band. They’re not prone to dropping all their riff-exploding secrets in one swoop, for starters. Or pledging themselves to any zero-conquering Britrock scene. Instead, Biffy have been imposing themselves like a slow, sly disease.
‘Infinity Land’ is the part of the illness where you begin twitching and the fever manifests itself in a series of grand, retina-piercing illusions. They sound seriously unwell. And seriously brilliant.
Their third album in as many years, ‘Infinity Land’ is proof that theirs is a seemingly endless fountain of ideas. There’s nothing as simple as verse/chorus/verse/reflective middle eight/chorus formula bore here; instead, there’s the electro-thumping mindwarp of opener ‘Glitter And Trauma’, which, after diverting into the riff equivalent of a car collision, twists into a post-rock anthem (you know, the ones where everything sounds perfectly out of time with each other), the avalanching devilry of fucked-up love song ‘Strung To Your Ribcage’ and the driving strobe-rock of new single ‘My Recovery Injection’, which would sound like an epic Foo Fighters track if the guitars hadn’t been rewired by Thurston Moore.
The discordance here never overshadows their ability to write great melodies, though. Unlike, say, the unrefined rawness of yourcodenameis:milo, the dark, headspinning alleyways that Biffy lead you down almost certainly end in something you can singalong to. So, whilst ‘Some Kind Of Wizard’ sounds like a speed-addled hillbilly waltz, it’s dispensing with the sort of rampaging chorus that Funeral For A Friend would kill their best mate for. ‘The Atrocity’, sounds like the sort of dark-hearted, brutal vignette R.E.M. once would’ve cherished, whilst the murderous screams of ‘Wave Upon Wave Upon Wave’ resemble a mourning ...Trail Of Dead.
‘Infinity Land’ is an intelligent, challenging rock record that will spike your ears to attention from start to finish. Like we said, Biffy Clyro aren’t your average rock band.
Biffy Clyro 'Infinity Land' (Beggars Banquet) released October 4 2004.
Tagged as Biffy Clyro, archive
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