Opposites

Product Information

The second single "End Of" was released on 5 March alongside the announcement of the album's title and the release date of 15 May, although this date had to be postponed to 14 August, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

omething about Neil's words rings true, in marked contrast to the kind of generalities that usually pass for lyrics in the world of stadium rock. That thing was another musical anomaly that, in the hands of the Scottish trio, just worked: the gruelling double album.The Scots somehow manage to blend the discordant post-hardcore and jazzy time signatures of their formative years with gargantuan, arena-filling choruses (Sounds Like Balloons) and make them sound like they were made for each other. On paper, a potential mess, this sense of adventure paid off, spawning a volley of Top 30 singles, including the disco thump of Glitter and Trauma.

The Sand at the Core of Our Bones addresses the issues that beset the band in the wake of their success (drummer Ben Johnson struggled with a drink problem, while in a recent Kerrang!Clocking in at almost 80 minutes, Opposites further expanded their penchant for experimental flourishes: there’s bagpipes on the single Stingin’ Belle, Spanish Radio boasts a mariachi flavour, and for those who appreciate a wall of kazoos, there’s the pacy Little Hospitals. rock (A Girl and His Cat, Little Hospitals) to enormodome anthems (Black Chandelier, Biblical), Opposites has it well and truly sewn up. starts off sounding for all the world like Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins, until Simon Neil’s impassioned cries are carried on a wave of fuzzy guitars.

Alexis Petridis of The Guardian also awarded the album three stars, declaring that " Opposites may not be the career-defining masterpiece it's intended as, but it's certainly not the pompous disaster it could have been: it has failings, but not the ones you might expect. And yet here they are, apparently falling for one of the great cliches: the double concept album on which hugely successful rock stars explain at length how awful it is being hugely successful rock stars.Biffy Clyro are a band who have always prided themselves on evading rock’n’roll clichés; they are three normal men, who live normal lives with normal wives and girlfriends in the very normal Ayrshire, in Scotland. In 2003, the band retreated to the Linford Manor recording studio in Great Linford, Milton Keynes, England, to record the follow-up to Blackened Sky. There’s the straight-up rock of Little Hospitals that morphs into a quirky prog-rock bridge and back again.