Riffy Cyclone return with a short, sharp attack with precious few surprises
The seventh album from the UK’s second best power rock outfit (after Royal Blood) is a shorter and sharper affair than 2013’s expansive 77-minute, 20-track Opposites.
Out go kazoos, bagpipes and mariachi bands for a tighter, more bloodletting set and while the Scot proggers still churn up plenty of dust, at this stage the chuckling demons of self-parody may be lurking in the wings
There is no doubting the trio’s talent for hurtling velocity and that cathartic switchback, quiet/loud dynamic still has the ability to thrill after all these years but too much of Ellipsis fails to really sink its teeth in.
Wolves of Winter, not the only song title here that sounds like an episode of GoT, amps up maximum heaviosity with a throat-shredding call and response; Friends And Enemies finds them in exhilarating attack mode; Flammable rejoices in a beautifully corrosive guitar sound but the likes of On A Bang and Medicine are really very ordinary.
The biggest surprise here is off-kilter country rock song Small Wishes. It’s a real bolt out of the billowing black skies and combines a wayward honky tonk ramble with artfully de-tuned guitars and the intriguing lyric: “I saw a man, he stole our national thunder. He had to leave on a glorious tide The wizard shit and held it under our nostrils.” Could this brilliantly bonkers ditty be frontman Simon Neil’s very prescient Brexit song?
Cleaned and scrubbed to a bright, digital sheen, somehow you miss the ragged glory of yore. However, as the title suggests, Ellipsis may be Biffy leaving things hanging in the air before another regroup and rethink . . .
Alan Corr @corralan
