It’s been four years since Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro’s breakthrough album, Only Revolutions. Only Revolutions‘ excellently blended hard rock, punk, and straight up big bang arena rock with a fantastic production. Being a big fan of that album, and the band’s sound, I was more than happy to check out their latest release, Opposites. Opposites is a very long, double album, with 22 songs spanning 75 minutes. Taking it all in is quite the feat, so I recommend doing it in a few sittings.

The album’s sound is really only slightly different than Only Revolutions. On that album, the band used a lot more brass and string sections for a more grandiose production. On this album, while I still feel that they used plenty of that, it’s just much more subtle, which, to me, is fine, it just makes for less variation between songs.

On this album especially, Biffy Clyro’s songs rarely deviate from a few similar musical ideas. Most songs begin with a heavy riff, and have a huge, catchy chorus. Although I love that, it makes the album harder and harder to get into, even more so when it’s this long.

I would say there’s an even spread of memorable and mediocre throughout the album. For example, “Different People” has the very distinct slow opening to smooth burst of a guitar lick at the middle, while I couldn’t really give much of a good description of “The Joke’s On Us”. Some of my favorite tracks have to be “Sounds Like Balloons”, “The Thaw”, and “Spanish Radio”.

The band has definitely tightened their screws even more on this album. It’s very suitable for an arena size crowd, and I don’t see why they don’t have a fanbase as big as someone like Foo Fighters. The production is much slicker, much bigger, and occasionally, much more dense. If you’re a fan of Biffy’s sound, you’ll probably enjoy the hell out of this album. If you’re not, you might have a rough time tackling the potency of their presentation. I can’t say much more than it’s pretty dang good, and there are a few tracks that I like a lot more than others. For Opposites, I got to go with a 4 out of 5.

Here’s Biffy Clyro’s video for “Black Chandelier”