BIFFY CLYRO fall into a similar category as Feeder. They’re one of those bands that the old fans try and justify by saying how much they used to rock in the beginning, but they’re still good if a little diluted by a taste of mainstream success.
These statements are simply not true – Biffy Clyro have always been terrible, whether they had the guitar crunches of youthful exuberance or otherwise. They were at best an average brit-rock band, and have grown continually worse from there. A university housemate introduced me to them several years ago, never referring to them as anything less than Biffy fucking Clyro, and having been unfortunate to catch them at Reading around the same time, I was happy to concur.
Just in case you needed something to keep you ticking over in between chart-probing breakthrough album ‘Puzzles’ and it’s possibly anticipated somewhere follow-up, here is bridge single ‘Mountains.’
Average, soulless and mundane are the three least offensive adjectives I could conjure up to describe this song. Starting off all piano-led like it might be a ballad, everything kicks in rather quickly and goes absolutely nowhere from there. If it sounds catchy, it’s because it’s so derivative of it’s US rawk influences that you’ve definitely heard it all before.
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“I am a mountain / I am the sea / You can’t take that away from me,” are the lyrics that form the chorus, and perhaps give the best indication as to how banal this effort is. It doesn’t mean anything and sounds like it was created under record company pressure to keep the money coming in from I-Tunes.
Take away the electric guitars and you have a very average indie song. Keep them in and you have an intolerably plain modern rock song, produced within an inch of it’s life. At this moment in time, McFly have more credibility. It’ll be another kick to the stomach of the staunch fans who used to think they had something, but for the record – they never did.
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