Biffy Clyro has our full attention. The band has come back roaring with “Wolves of Winter,” the first offering from Ellipsis, the follow up to 2013’s double album Opposites.
Set for July 8 release via Warner Bros Records and 14th Floor Recordings, the new album is said to be an in-your-face embrace of chaos that finds the native Scots on a path of renewed aggressive potency and arena ambition.
“Wolves Of Winter” was premiered on Beats 1 by Zane Lowe, which you can hear below. Speaking to Lowe, Biffy frontman Simon Neil said: “We’re saying something new with our seventh album… We’re trying to feel like it’s our first album again. We’ve still got balls. We’re still here to get in your face.”
In a press release, Neil says of the new song: “‘Wolves of Winter’ is about us being wolves on a patch and if you come onto that patch, we’ll tear you limb-from-limb”.
“It’ll be leaner and meaner than the last – no orchestras,” Neil promised NME not long ago. “This album is going to be the opposite of cinematic. If the last records were kind of Ridley Scott, then this one is more John Waters. It’s quite dirty! We’ve taken a lot of influence from recent hip-hop records, like the latest A$AP Rocky – they’re so fucking good because they’ve got really grimy, dirty, horrible sounds with beautiful vocals, or vice versa. We’re trying to get that balance of things teetering on the edge of chaos the entire time. It’s going to sound like Biffy, but it’s about ‘rocking’ instead of ‘rock’.”
Neill described the album as the start of a new chapter: “For me, the first three albums we made were lo-fi, angular prog-metal and the last three were big-boy records – big, important music. This one is just embracing the chaos. This is the first one where we’ve been feeling our way in the dark a little. I think that’s exciting. This is probably the pre-teen album! The reboot.”
“It’s the first album where I’ve tried to come out fighting, give the people who’ve upset me a bit of what-for. I feel like this one is me saying that I know who I am, here are my strengths, here are my flaws, it is what it is… It’s fight rock, pint-in-the-face rock.”
