Biffy Clyro preview

Biffy Clyro
Park West, Chicago
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

This isn’t your little brother’s Roadrunner Records anymore, and the release of Biffy Clyro’s newest album further proves it.

Roadrunner, the label acts like Slipknot, Megadeth, and Soulfly call home has started expanding in the last few years. Metalheads can no longer blindly buy whatever the label puts on shelves because there isn’t a guarantee anymore it will be worthy of headbanging. Last year the label released an album by piano-driven cabaret punks The Dresden Dolls, earlier this year local pop-punk group Madina Lake dropped their album on Roadrunner, and the label has even signed psychedelic pop buzz band De Novo Dahl. And on their Roadrunner debut, Puzzle, Scotland’s Biffy Clyro also kick away at the walls surrounding Roadrunner. Puzzle is Biffy’s fourth album, but first in the States, and the trio and Roadrunner went all out to ensure a good product, hiring renowned producer GGGarth Richardson (Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers) as well as engineer Mike Fraser (AC/DC, Rush) and mixer Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Jeff Buckley). The results are big, poppy, polished, sometimes heavy (“9/15ths,” “Saturday Superhouse”), sometimes not (“Machines,” “Love Has A Diameter”), and almost always catchy-as-hell (especially “Semi-Mental 4/15ths,” “A Whole Child Ago”). Released overseas earlier this year via 14th Floor Records, Puzzle earned big-time kudos there (Oxford Journal said the band could be the “next truly important rock outfit to emerge from the British Isles”), and it will be interesting to see if Roadrunner and its reputation – much more Fear Factory than Foo Fighters – can do the same for the band in the States.

Biffy Clyro and Ra Ra Riot open for Editors.

– Trevor Fisher

Click here to download Biffy Clyro’s “Get Fucked Stud.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly