Biffy Clyro, A Celebration of Endings: Album Review!

Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro have been at the top of the industry for almost a decade now, selling out arenas and headlining festivals worldwide. For the most part their eight previous studio albums have solidified this point, three of which have been certified gold in the UK and their most praised album, 2009's Only Revolutions being certified double platinum. Their latest release that came out last Friday, A Celebration Of Endings, looks to continue that trend of great heavy rock songs mixed with emotional, musically complex ballads. I'm a pretty big fan of the former so let’s see if this album delivers like the others!

In my personal opinion, it starts out a little weak. North of No South isn’t exactly a bad song, but for a band who’ve had such huge album openers as The Captain, Wolves of Winter and Balance, Not Symmetry in the past, this lacks the certain heavy punch I've come to expect and love when first sticking on a Biffy album. There is a good riff in there, for sure, but it's not given much space to breath, everything else is going on over it constantly. A fairly passable, mid-tempo chorus and whole song which isn’t terrible by any stretch, just a little lackluster.

The second track, The Champ, would have made a stronger opener. While it isn’t the heavy song I was touting about in the previous paragraph, I loved the build in this. The piano and strings and slow vocals, the almost theatrical sound for the first minute or so were beautiful, especially with the excellent lyrics. When the song kicks in it is still enjoyable, and the chorus is great and super catchy, but in my opinion, it was at its best in its first third.

Weird Leisure, for me, feels like a bland rehash of the ideas from the first two songs. It's still not bad by any stretch, but when an album is three tracks in and starting to sound same-y, leaving me with not much to say about it, it's not the best. Especially given the fact that this song was released as one of the album’s single's, too! *edit* just to warn you all, I may speak about this issue a lot...

Tiny Indoor Fireworks, another single off the album, while still feeling vaguely similar to the others, at least has the catchy chorus Biffy is known for. The ‘Hey, hey, hey' parts will definitely be a crowd favourite live, and the bass driven verses are fun and have a certain bounce to them. A good choice for a single, and could easily be the lead track from the album going forwards.

Worst Type of Best Possible starts out so promising, a hugely heavy guitar riff that wouldn’t feel out of place on an early Muse album. Drop tuned and hitting you straight out the gate, it made me so hopeful. So, imagine how let down I felt when less than 15 seconds into the track that riff is dropped in favour of a slower, lighter one and isn’t then reintroduced until the closing 30 seconds of the song. The middle portion of the song is okay, another catchy chorus (because of course, it's Biffy), but why tease me like that, guys? C'mon!

Finally, six tracks in and we come to my first genuine highlight of the album, Space. Another of the five tracks released before the album dropped, this is by far the slowest and most stripped back, the ballad of the album. The stripped back arrangement of acoustic guitar, simple drums and vocals, backed by strings for the chorus, make this by far one of the most beautiful songs in their entire discography. Think Many of Horror, but maybe even better. The lyrics are incredible as well, so full of emotion and feeling. I wouldn’t do it justice typing any out in this, so I would advise you instead to just check out this masterpiece!

Another personal highlight of the album for me is End Of. In fact, the two words from my first-listen notes express my exact feelings on the songs. ‘HEAVINESS. FINALLY'. The slow build drums and guitar over the low bassline makes this instantly one I want to see live, and when it kicks in the riff is insane. The verse, while low, has an edge to it not heard on the rest of the album so far. Another great chorus too, of course, but it's heavy too. A great and most welcome change of pace.

Unfortunately, my praise for this album cannot last forever. Both Instant History and The Pink Limit right back into the same tired formula the first half of the album suffered from. Both feel almost Imagine Dragons-y in their presentation. Now, don’t get me wrong, Dragons aren’t bad, and definitely have their place in the music industry, but too many rock bands these days are stripping back and trying to emulate their sound instead of sticking to the sound that gained them their fans. I feel like I just expected more from Biffy than this. As I said below, while I'm repeating myself a lot, there really is a lot of similar stuff on this album, and not in a good way. At least Pink Limit has a decent chorus.

Opaque is another ballad, this one more akin to God and Satan, even down to some of the vocal lines. It's a good song, and some more incredible lyrics from Simon Neil, but I personally much preferred God and Satan this time around. It just didn’t quite hit the same emotional level for me, although maybe God and Satan's lyrics just resonated better for me personally.

Thankfully, the guys know how to finish off an album with a bang. Cop Syrup starts off HEAVY and doesn’t let up once, and it is bloody fantastic. This sounds like early Biffy, or at least something off their (admittedly much better) last album, Balance, Not Symmetry. The same aggression from End Of is there, but this doesn’t let up once in the first two and a half minutes of its runtime, easily the best song on the album. Then, as if appealing to exactly what I love, the closing four minutes of the song (and thus, the album) is a stripped back, almost proggy acoustic part, which made me love it even more. Where was all this experimentation and creativity throughout the rest of the album?

Overall, I'm really not sure how I feel about the album. There is definitely some great stuff on here, three or four excellent songs and a few that were still pretty good. However, there was also a lot of what felt like filler; mid-tempo, generic pop-rock songs that really felt out of place being the majority of a Biffy album. While listening I kept drawing comparisons to Red Hot Chili Peppers' 2016 album, The Getaway. Talented musicianship and good songs in their own rite, but most of it didn’t feel like the same band who wrote all their other music. I really hope this album grows on me, because I am a big fan of most of their other work. It just feels a little too much of an unorganised, jumbled mess for me to give it too high of a score.

Overall: 5/10.