While touring their 7th album, Ellipsis, Biffy Clyro mentioned they were working on a soundtrack album. And then we heard nothing until the day before it dropped with the release of the title track and the announcement it was coming the following day. This 17 track album is the soundtrack to a film of the same name, apparently an imagining of Romeo and Juliet but from Juliet's perspective. The band have definitely used this slight change in format to explore some of their weirder tendencies which have been largely smoothed off in recent years as the band have become more popular.
The album opens with the title track, where Simon Neil screams the opening line then settles into an off-kilter rhythm against this angular drum pattern. It has a typical anthemic Biffy chorus then dives right back into the weirdness for the second verse. The second and third track are softer emotional tracks that you would find in any film score and don't do much for me, but following that is Sunrise. This track opens with about 30 seconds of intense thrashing on not just the bands typical instruments but also there's some piano in there as well. All this noise forms into this monstrous Rage Against The Machine style riff. The stomping verses of this track build into another anthemic chorus, with the captivating lyrics of "I didn't wanna break but I broke" and "I didn't try and speak but I Spoke". After this comes Pink, the first of three short, wholly instrumental mood pieces. The first five tracks are a microcosm of the variety on this album, with the band exploring entirely new sounds and ideas.
Gates Of Heaven has a chiming piano as the lead instrument and a guitar as only an accompanying instrument. The track shows a level of restraint from the band, it doesn't go overboard. Fever Dream is a reverb heavy electronic track which has vast soups of atmosphere. Skittering synths lace Neil's voice, singing "Where the fuck is God?". The reverb and echo effects slowly builds at the back end of the track, turning the fever dream into what sounds like some kind of nightmare. As a pinnacle of the throw everything at the wall and see what sticks weirdness, Tunnels And Trees samples a floor board creaking as a part of the percussion. The band really are just doing whatever they feel like on this record.
This vast variety of sounds and the fact that it is a soundtrack album (which doesn't lend itself to a traditional studio album structure), does mean it doesn't flow as well as other Biffy records. There are a handful of tracks I don't care for and while the instrumental tracks are likely necessary as an accompaniment to the movie, they do kind of pad out the album a bit. Overall, there are some absolute bangers on here, but its lengthy 17 track long runtime makes them easy to miss.
Top Tracks: Balance, Not Symmetry, Sunrise, Gates Of Heaven, Fever Dream, Plead, Touch, Jasabiab, Following Master
7/10
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