“I can’t divorce you, you put me through hell,” fears Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil on the taut verse of ‘Futique’’s skittering new wave-tinged opener ‘A Little Love’. No, he’s not lawyering up or looking for an out – just wrestling his way out of a place that “ain’t utopia, but it’s better than hell”. That feeling of purgatory, of how “we are never aware when we do anything for the last time and there’s a beauty and sadness within that”, is what drives the Scottish rock trio’s 10th album.
As Neil recently told NME (interview coming soon), he felt that way too about the ‘Biff, before digging deep into the 30-year journey as three pals raging through Nirvana covers in a garage to the Reading & Leeds-toppling beast we know today. As the glorious chorus chimes: “With a little love, we can conquer it all.”
‘Futique’ is that marriage of living in the moment with no shame of the past. ‘Hunting Season’ has that paranoid rush of Biff of old, attacking a sneering judgemental digital world “with an addiction to the show” before a victorious resolve with some arena-destroying riffery and stop-start majesty. ‘Shot One’ leans on Biffy’s poppier side (albeit with a new spacey European sheen, perhaps courtesy of having worked in the iconic Bowie-renowned Hansa studios), confidently sailing through the ups and downs of being in a band: “It’s always touch-and-go to make something beautiful”.
It’s fitting that the German capital, the city that understands the term ‘zero hour’ more than most and where The Thin White Duke went to start over from scratch, is where Biffy headed for their self-rediscovery on ‘Futique’. There’s a Berlin Bowie Trilogy synth propulsive pulse underlying ‘True Believer’ and the “exquisite black” of ‘Woe Is Me, Wow Is You’, while album highlight ‘Dearest Amygdala’ also soars with that retro-space-age-kraut-rock-meets-glam ambition, revelling in how “the wrong way is just another way”.
Beyond that though, with every neck-jerking rhythm, head-scratching line, twisted math-blessed riff and chest-pounding chorus, Biffy are just referencing themselves. We’ve the lighters-up balladry of the tender ‘Goodbye’, the encore-starting ‘A Thousand And One’ to bristle alongside ‘Many Of Horror’ and ‘Machines’, and the Mike Oldfield meets Muse proggy yet subtle future-scape ‘Two People In Love’, then the auld Biff rock menace of ‘Friendshipping’ and silly pit-inciter ‘It’s Chemical’ (“WOOH!”). It’s all gold.
After the tortured but triumphant sabre-rattling companion albums of the lockdown-defining ‘A Celebration Of Endings’ and ‘The Myth Of The Happily Ever After’ – and with Neil having exorcised his ultraviolent grindcore demons with side-project Empire State Bastard – Biffy Clyro have delivered one of their most personal and definitive records to date. There’s a vulnerability met with a forward motion; a feeling of three friends shining light through the cracks to find a renewed sense of purpose. You can holler “‘Mon the Biff!” for a while longer, it seems. A little love and a lot of noise goes a long way.
Details
- Record label: Warner Records/14 Floor
- Release date: September 19, 2025
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