Biffy Clyro

I saw the "Mountains" video on tv and liked it very much. So I bought this latest album. From the first notes on, I thought, this is a special band. And the album turned out to be great. Really love it ! And it never left the cdplayer since. This is the best album of 2007.....and maybe 2008 ?

I'm usually not one to try something out just because the critics liked it, but when I heard the praise this album was getting, my interest was peaked. I got the album, and fell in love. As a seasoned music lover, I wondered how I had never looked into this underrated band.

I listened to the album over and over, never growing tired of it, and each time I was struck by its quality. It was very melodic, with a keen sense of harmony as well, the lyrics were interesting, and each of the band's members had impressive skill on their respective instruments. Each song was distinct and well-written, and everytime I listened to the album, I was left stunned.

I've listened to most of the band's other material since then, and there's some great stuff - truly a fantastic band - but still, this album moves me every time, and I still think it's their best-written, musically speaking.

I know some Biffy Clyro fans are miffed because it's been successful (as if that's a bad thing), or because it's attracted new fans (again, is that a bad thing?), or because it they think it sounds more mainstream (which can be contested). Of course, one of the other reviews even complained that critics liked it too much. These fans need to lighten up and look at the big picture. All good bands progress and go into new territory from time to time, and that's what Biffy Clyro's doing, and, if you ask me, they're going into exciting new directions.

...I have been a huge biffy clyro fan for a while...Infinity Land is one of my favorite albums being both experimental and never at a point where I could wrap one genre around it...it took a while for a new album to come out (especially after the tragic death of the lead singer's mother) but there really is no excuse for this...

...the first track "Living is a problem because everyone dies" is a very good song with the use of violins and children's singing (in a ghostly way) to create an amazingly good song...unfortunately that's where the downhill slope becomes literally vertical...

...songs like "Who's got a match" and "Folding stars" are poppy even for Biffy's standards...I could cope with "Questions and Answers" and "My Recovery Injection" because the rest of the album made up for it and they weren't that awful...they're probably in the same category as "Saturday Superhouse" on this album...

...what bothers me even more is they are getting huge praise and even radio play from daytime radio which is pretty much saying to them like a tellytubby "again again again!!"...

...ok to conclude this album is nothing compared to their older albums and if you honestly believe that it is then I guess you are a better Biffy fan then me...download the one good song and hope that they will go back to their old ways...or something new and fresh...just evolve into something interesting...so until that happens this will be my last Mon the Biff...

I am a sort of a new fan of Biffy Clyro, I first heard of them when they were opening up for Queens of the Stone Age. I figured with a name like that and the fact that Queens has them opening for them, they have to be at least different. I like music that is different but yet is hard hitting and melodic. That is exactly what they are.

Their fourth effort since the mid 90's I feel that "Puzzle" is their most grown up and realized album. The experimentation is still there and the hard hitting tracks are there as well. Although it is not as heavey as previous albums there is almost, if not any, screaming at all. The melodies and the instrumentation make up for it. After listening to it a few times I think that this is definitley of my favorite albums of all time.

An orginal and very talented band I would recommend "Puzzle" or any one of their three other albums to anyone.

Biffy Clyro absolutley know what they are doing when they write music. Interesting album, I've listened to it 5 times in a row when I got it and still not sick of it. Highly recomanded!

I've been on the biffy clyro bandwagon for quite a while now, having accidently discovered "Neon" as a free download on amazon.com (I think it's still there); Infinity Land takes the biffy sound to a new level: Mix in prog elements of Rush, wailing guitars of your fave emo-core bands, hooks of your favorite sing-along songs and hit 'puree'...there's really something for everyone on this disc. Standout tracks include Glitter and Trauma, Only One Word Comes to Mind and Wave Upon Wave Upon Wave. All 3 make my 'best of' for 2004-05 already. Oh, yes...if you're in the UK on holiday, GO TO A BIFFY CONCERT! They are an amazing 3 piece and put out a hell of a lot of sound!!

one of the best bands of our time ive liked his past albums but i love Infinity land, you cant help but sing along. He's the only person who can sing " sit down, shut up and wait your turn" politly. You really need to see biffy live (rock city 12th oct "rock on") to appreciate the full blown effect of the quality of music he plays. His songs have meanings to them whether there through experience or not, they put you in a place or time in your life where you can relate these songs too. Biffy is the up & coming rock band of this year. Any one who doesnt buy this album is missing out on a lot of damn fine music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Little is known about Biffy Clyro here in the States so I was very surprised by this band when I happened to come across them randomly on Myspace. Wow, this band is great. I purchased all their albums shortly thereafter and I like this one the most. This album is a little more prog-rock and "mature" sounding than Blackened Sky and every song on it is quality. I wouldn't call Biffy Clyro a prog band, but there are definitely some prog elements to some of their songs. If you enjoy great straight forward alt-rock with elements of punk, prog, and metal, pick up this album.

Unbelievable! I haven't so much enjoyed a debut since Placebo. However, I don't think a review of this band should be confined to normal cliche comparrisons, as the band, and indeed this album excel to the top of my stack on a regular interval. My question is - why did it take me til 2004 to discover them??!!?!

Its been a revelation in my music listening life to have Biffy Clyro's first two albums in my collection. The extroadinary riffs, vocal parts, lyrics and compassion all create a warmth and atmosphere that makes you want to invite your mates around and share. There hasn't been a dissapointed listener to those who have heard these songs.

The mechanics of the songs vary, however, the intensity and drive remains consistent - each song with its own bag of tricks and multitude of hooks that will have you rewinding frequently. The music remains complex yet accessible and although catchy many parts will seem unique well into your 50th visit. Tiresome, these albums are not!

So what makes them so different? I don't really know - I suppose its the use of legion styles of rock and indie techniques, congealed into an easily digested audio onslaught with a compulsion to stay popular without sounding common. Sometimes its the lyrics you think of, other times a riff you can't shake. Whichever it is, Biffy Clyro will not be filed in the back of any cupboard nor abandoned without comment. Blackened sky and Vertigo of Bliss should be a double album in my book, and then labelled perhaps the best rock/alternative album of the 2000s!

So, you release a debut album as good as "Blackened Sky", which spawns four top quality singles, you have an insane and dedicated underground following which is growing bigger by the day and are receiving rave reviews in the press for intelligent and unpredictable grunge/emo/metal rock. What do you do next?

Questions require answers, and when one of the newer songs you start playing live is called "Questions and Answers", people start expecting good answers.

Well, Biffy have come up with them. Vertigo of Bliss is one of the most accomplished and varied albums I have heard for a long long time. From the thumping, shouting opening of 'Bodies In Flight' to the sudden heart-stopping climax of 'Now the Action Is On Fire', this album grabs you by the balls (or other sensitive areas) and implores you to listen. You just can't help yourself. Each track begins and you try to predict where its going to end up, usually ending up completely wrong as Biffy twist the songs this way and that with crashing riffs, furious shouting, funky melodies and fragile broken vocals. Examples - "A Day Of..." starts with heavy drums and thrashed guitars and ends up with the group singing choral harmonies, the anthemic "All the Way Down..." begins with quiet contemplation and ends with a repeated shouted catchy chorus with fantastic backing vocals - reminiscent of the old classic '57'.

And what singles has this album spawned? Well theres the epic 'toys toys toys', the catchy, slightly more mainstream 'The Ideal Height', the irrepressible 'Eradicate The Doubt'("you are the summer I'll feel forever"), and the aforementioned masterpiece 'Questions and Answers'. Great songs all.

However, look elsewhere for the truly magical as its the hidden gems that this album contains that make it so special. Gems like the hypnotic, breathy, dreamy surrealness of 'Diary Of Always', the magnificent closing track 'Now the Action Is On Fire', and the joyous glory of 'When The Faction's Fractioned' (just listen to the little 'huhs' and 'woos' in the background).

Yes, so the album is chockfull of excellent songs, and the running order is well planned in my opinion. However, truly great albums for me always contain one song above all the others that I treasure. Can Vertigo Of Bliss score one final mark for this?

Of course it can! 'Liberate the Illiterate' is one of my all-time favourite songs, from the hopeful start ("don't be sad, keep smiling"), through the building tension, to the quiet pensive moments just before the full-blooded screams and the final, glorious repition of the song's title. Wonderful.

This album is without doubt the best I own. When you listen to this cd you have to completely remove any expectations and any knowledge of music composition. The way every song in the album is put together is unorthadox to say the least. forget verse, chorus, verse, chorus. each song is a journey with a beggining and an end and in between anything goes. There is one set rule: it is inventive, stunning and incredibly clever. Since blackened sky the biff have really matured and bloomed into one of the most inventive and distinguishable bands around today. despite almost no publicity biffy's extremely dedicated fanbase managed to push their last single "questions and answers" into the top 40 of the national uk pop charts. Somehow biffy manage to make a previously impossible sound, a sort of gentle alt EMO Metal with compassion. A cocktail of heavy guitar sounds and carefully executed licks blended with sensitive lyrics like "boulders of hate within love decay".

This band are almost perfect in my eyes. 100/100 buy it now!

Unbelievable! I haven't so much enjoyed a debut since Placebo. However, I don't think a review of this band should be confined to normal cliche comparrisons, as the band, and indeed this album excel to the top of my stack on a regular interval. My question is - why did it take me til 2004 to discover them??!!?!

Its been a revelation in my music listening life to have Biffy Clyro's first two albums in my collection. The extroadinary riffs, vocal parts, lyrics and compassion all create a warmth and atmosphere that makes you want to invite your mates around and share. There hasn't been a dissapointed listener to those who have heard these songs.

The mechanics of the songs vary, however, the intensity and drive remains consistent - each song with its own bag of tricks and multitude of hooks that will have you rewinding frequently. The music remains complex yet accessible and although catchy many parts will seem unique well into your 50th visit. Tiresome, these albums are not!

So what makes them so different? I don't really know - I suppose its the use of legion styles of rock and indie techniques, congealed into an easily digested audio onslaught with a compulsion to stay popular without sounding common. Sometimes its the lyrics you think of, other times a riff you can't shake. Whichever it is, Biffy Clyro will not be filed in the back of any cupboard nor abandoned without comment. Blackened sky and Vertigo of Bliss should be a double album in my book, and then labelled perhaps the best rock/alternative album of the 2000s!

Containing one of Britain's anthems of the last few years in '57' Blackened Sky is a demonstraton that this kind of music doesn't neccessarily have to sound the same as everyone else, a la takingbackfromautumntofinch.

Biffy Clyro are one of the tightest bands around and can pull off a great live show, which should really be exposed to a bigger audience, instead of the constant support slots for 'hyped' bands.

I'd recommend this to all.

Biffy Clyro have to be one of britain's most underrated bands. Blackened Sky is a full blown alternative rock album. All the songs are full of emotion and guts. Good singles have appeared from this album, such as 27,57, j.d.i and justboy.
A must buy album.

I have been hearing hype for this band for the past year. When I actually heard it I began to view my mates music taste with suspicion. O.K 1 star is a little cruel and vindictive, but if you are into this style of music, there are probably around one thousand other bands you may want to check out first. These are the sort of songs that a decent band would leave off an album.

:: Biffy Clyro - Blackened Sky ::

Being a personal favorite and with their follow up to the well received debut l.p `Blacked Sky' being released later this year, exciting times are destined for the Glasgow based progressive rock three piece Biffy Clyro.

`Blackened Sky' takes the "won't be rushed" pretentious attitudes of recent Tool and multiplies it with the minimalist but effective raw dynamics of the Deftones, before adding catchy emotive melodies with gentle lyrics and guitar lines along the way. Tracks such as opener `Joy.Discovery.Invention' [a sing along favorite live] captivate the listener by gently serenading until 1 minute 46 seconds [exactly] into the song when the song crushes your false pretenses with the defensive aggression of a cornered animal. However it is my favorite song from the album `Kill the old, torture their young" that captivate what Biffy Clyro is all about with the falsetto vocals, fantastic harmonies [all three sing live] and the subtle guitar changes that send contradicting emotions flooding through your head.

As a result is it very hard not to get caught up by this band and if their [possible career making] second album is anything near as good as the standards they have set themselves then Biffy are indeed destined big things...

-Andy-

I saw the "Mountains" video on tv and liked it very much. So I bought this latest album. From the first notes on, I thought, this is a special band. And the album turned out to be great. Really love it ! And it never left the cdplayer since. This is the best album of 2007.....and maybe 2008 ?

I'm usually not one to try something out just because the critics liked it, but when I heard the praise this album was getting, my interest was peaked. I got the album, and fell in love. As a seasoned music lover, I wondered how I had never looked into this underrated band.

I listened to the album over and over, never growing tired of it, and each time I was struck by its quality. It was very melodic, with a keen sense of harmony as well, the lyrics were interesting, and each of the band's members had impressive skill on their respective instruments. Each song was distinct and well-written, and everytime I listened to the album, I was left stunned.

I've listened to most of the band's other material since then, and there's some great stuff - truly a fantastic band - but still, this album moves me every time, and I still think it's their best-written, musically speaking.

I know some Biffy Clyro fans are miffed because it's been successful (as if that's a bad thing), or because it's attracted new fans (again, is that a bad thing?), or because it they think it sounds more mainstream (which can be contested). Of course, one of the other reviews even complained that critics liked it too much. These fans need to lighten up and look at the big picture. All good bands progress and go into new territory from time to time, and that's what Biffy Clyro's doing, and, if you ask me, they're going into exciting new directions.

...I have been a huge biffy clyro fan for a while...Infinity Land is one of my favorite albums being both experimental and never at a point where I could wrap one genre around it...it took a while for a new album to come out (especially after the tragic death of the lead singer's mother) but there really is no excuse for this...

...the first track "Living is a problem because everyone dies" is a very good song with the use of violins and children's singing (in a ghostly way) to create an amazingly good song...unfortunately that's where the downhill slope becomes literally vertical...

...songs like "Who's got a match" and "Folding stars" are poppy even for Biffy's standards...I could cope with "Questions and Answers" and "My Recovery Injection" because the rest of the album made up for it and they weren't that awful...they're probably in the same category as "Saturday Superhouse" on this album...

...what bothers me even more is they are getting huge praise and even radio play from daytime radio which is pretty much saying to them like a tellytubby "again again again!!"...

...ok to conclude this album is nothing compared to their older albums and if you honestly believe that it is then I guess you are a better Biffy fan then me...download the one good song and hope that they will go back to their old ways...or something new and fresh...just evolve into something interesting...so until that happens this will be my last Mon the Biff...

I am a sort of a new fan of Biffy Clyro, I first heard of them when they were opening up for Queens of the Stone Age. I figured with a name like that and the fact that Queens has them opening for them, they have to be at least different. I like music that is different but yet is hard hitting and melodic. That is exactly what they are.

Their fourth effort since the mid 90's I feel that "Puzzle" is their most grown up and realized album. The experimentation is still there and the hard hitting tracks are there as well. Although it is not as heavey as previous albums there is almost, if not any, screaming at all. The melodies and the instrumentation make up for it. After listening to it a few times I think that this is definitley of my favorite albums of all time.

An orginal and very talented band I would recommend "Puzzle" or any one of their three other albums to anyone.

Biffy Clyro absolutley know what they are doing when they write music. Interesting album, I've listened to it 5 times in a row when I got it and still not sick of it. Highly recomanded!

I saw the "Mountains" video on tv and liked it very much. So I bought this latest album. From the first notes on, I thought, this is a special band. And the album turned out to be great. Really love it ! And it never left the cdplayer since. This is the best album of 2007.....and maybe 2008 ?

I'm usually not one to try something out just because the critics liked it, but when I heard the praise this album was getting, my interest was peaked. I got the album, and fell in love. As a seasoned music lover, I wondered how I had never looked into this underrated band.

I listened to the album over and over, never growing tired of it, and each time I was struck by its quality. It was very melodic, with a keen sense of harmony as well, the lyrics were interesting, and each of the band's members had impressive skill on their respective instruments. Each song was distinct and well-written, and everytime I listened to the album, I was left stunned.

I've listened to most of the band's other material since then, and there's some great stuff - truly a fantastic band - but still, this album moves me every time, and I still think it's their best-written, musically speaking.

I know some Biffy Clyro fans are miffed because it's been successful (as if that's a bad thing), or because it's attracted new fans (again, is that a bad thing?), or because it they think it sounds more mainstream (which can be contested). Of course, one of the other reviews even complained that critics liked it too much. These fans need to lighten up and look at the big picture. All good bands progress and go into new territory from time to time, and that's what Biffy Clyro's doing, and, if you ask me, they're going into exciting new directions.

...I have been a huge biffy clyro fan for a while...Infinity Land is one of my favorite albums being both experimental and never at a point where I could wrap one genre around it...it took a while for a new album to come out (especially after the tragic death of the lead singer's mother) but there really is no excuse for this...

...the first track "Living is a problem because everyone dies" is a very good song with the use of violins and children's singing (in a ghostly way) to create an amazingly good song...unfortunately that's where the downhill slope becomes literally vertical...

...songs like "Who's got a match" and "Folding stars" are poppy even for Biffy's standards...I could cope with "Questions and Answers" and "My Recovery Injection" because the rest of the album made up for it and they weren't that awful...they're probably in the same category as "Saturday Superhouse" on this album...

...what bothers me even more is they are getting huge praise and even radio play from daytime radio which is pretty much saying to them like a tellytubby "again again again!!"...

...ok to conclude this album is nothing compared to their older albums and if you honestly believe that it is then I guess you are a better Biffy fan then me...download the one good song and hope that they will go back to their old ways...or something new and fresh...just evolve into something interesting...so until that happens this will be my last Mon the Biff...

I am a sort of a new fan of Biffy Clyro, I first heard of them when they were opening up for Queens of the Stone Age. I figured with a name like that and the fact that Queens has them opening for them, they have to be at least different. I like music that is different but yet is hard hitting and melodic. That is exactly what they are.

Their fourth effort since the mid 90's I feel that "Puzzle" is their most grown up and realized album. The experimentation is still there and the hard hitting tracks are there as well. Although it is not as heavey as previous albums there is almost, if not any, screaming at all. The melodies and the instrumentation make up for it. After listening to it a few times I think that this is definitley of my favorite albums of all time.

An orginal and very talented band I would recommend "Puzzle" or any one of their three other albums to anyone.

Biffy Clyro absolutley know what they are doing when they write music. Interesting album, I've listened to it 5 times in a row when I got it and still not sick of it. Highly recomanded!