Going Beyond 'Some Flash-In-The-Pan Moment'

"I think it'd be sad to just be known for one song, and have to play that again and again," says James Johnston. "We feel that, with our fans, that there's a real connection that goes beyond some flash-in-the-pan moment." 

The bassist for Biffy Clyro is right: over seven LPs and across two decades, the Scottish rock-trio has been known for epic, proggy albums and loud, pummelling live shows, but have never been defined by one album, let alone a single song. The closest they came was with their fifth album, 2009's Only Revolutions. Its first single, Mountains, reached Top 5 in the UK and its fourth single, Many Of Horror, belatedly jumped to #8 when fans started a campaign to buy the original after one of The X Factor's contestants, Matt Cardle, covered the song under the name When We Collide.

"Even when all that stuff was happening, it wasn't that in-your-face," Johnston says. "Certainly, around that time, there was a lot more attention on the band. And, having your song covered on X Factor, that could've been a moment that overshadowed the band. But by then we'd spent years playing shows in the UK, building up a genuine audience, [so] nothing like that was ever going to be some defining moment for the band."

Johnston is speaking from "damp and dark" Glasgow, where Biffy Clyro are back home. As well as living some normal life - "spend time with family, see friends, create some enemies, go do stuff; give yourself things to talk about when you're far from home again" - the band are setting out work on two separate projects at once. They're simultaneously setting out to make both their eighth album, the follow-up to 2016's Ellipsis, and a soundtrack for a forthcoming feature film for Welsh director Jamie Adams.

"I don't know which comes first, how it'll work," Johnston admits. "At the moment, it's kind of exciting having it up in the air. Working on new ideas, but not knowing which music will end up with which project; I think that's bringing out the best in the band, it makes us kind of free."

The film project they're working on has no title, no script, barely even a premise; Biffy Clyro being invited to collaborate at ground zero. "We're going to be working with the director and writer very closely, so that the lyrics of the songs have a relationship to the dialogue of the movie, so that the themes of the story and the music are intertwined. The movie hasn't been shot yet, that'll come after we make the music. So, it's inverting that traditional set-up of supplying music for a movie that's already been shot and edited. There's a different relationship at play."

That relationship will include having the lyrics up for collaboration and debate, something Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil has never before allowed. "It's fraught with danger," Johnston laughs, "woe betide the man that tries to correct one of Sim's lyrics."

For their own imminent LP, the band are hoping to do "something completely different", but know that ambitions and results can vary. "No matter what, you can't change who you are," Johnston says. "You always end up closer to home than you think you're going to. We'll always end up being a three-piece rock band."

"There's always the temptation to turn up the heavy guitars, and pull out loads of riffs, go down a wormhole and make seven-minute rock jams," he continues. "We'll never get away from wanting to do that, we'll always have to try and temper that want. We're trying to push ourselves forward. On [Ellipsis], that was about electronics, trying to get away from just starting out every song as a band in a room. This [new] album, it's probably still too early to say. A pet hate of mine is when you read a band say something like, 'Our next album is going to be the heaviest thing you've ever heard!', but then by the time it comes out, they're like, 'This album is the poppiest thing you've ever heard!' I always find it hard to describe music at the best of times, but to try and describe music that's not yet even been written seems particularly foolish."