Biffy Clyro - Infinity Land

live the kind of charmed life that Easyworld clearly didn’t. Neither really sold bucket loads of their first two albums, but had hardcore fanbases. OK, one would attempt to take your leg off with a rusty hacksaw, while the other would sprinkle glitter and fairy dust over your head, but the fact remains - one stands, the other doesn’t.

You might call this a judgement day of sorts then - Biffy won’t get many more, or better chances to really hit the big time. ‘Glitter and Trauma’, the opening track, promised much on release, at least deviating from the usual quiet-loud-quick-slow formula for a while. On a full length album, they’ll have to pull out more stops than that.

So what do we actually get? A few wiggly moments of ‘musicianship’? Check. A bit more screaming than usual? Yep, you’ve got it. Biffy have produced exactly the album you would have expected from them. A fine effort, but falling just short of being a great one. There’s moments of sparkle - even if ‘My Recovery Injection’ is one of the weaker tracks, it has a pop hook to die for - but largely ‘Infinity Land’ starts to slide back into the dirge far too quickly.

If there was just a couple more gears and a touch more punch in the Biffy Clyro locker, it’s concievable they could reinvent the musical wheel. The dischordant harmonies are all very nice - the slow bits often moving, the loud parts exciting, but as a whole it bleeds together into one. The anthems in waiting of their earlier material just don’t appear.

There’s a lot to be said for a good, honest, devoted fanbase though - and this is a band who have the best in the business. For them this will be a classic of near biblical proportions. We’ll try again this time next year, shall we?