Old reliable: Why Biffy Clyro are the most consistent band around

Being consistent isn’t the most glamorous of accolades. It’s like being prompt. Or having neat handwriting. All very nice but they wouldn’t rank very highly on your tinder profile.

Instead, consistency is best left for a job interview, alongside ‘works well as part of a team and as an individual’ or ‘is a quick learner’. In short, consistency is functional. It’s never exciting. That is, unless you’re Biffy Clyro.

In the beginning there was nothing. Then some stuff happened. Then, in 1995, a 15-year-old Simon Neil got in contact with Ben Johnston and his twin brother James and formed Skrewfish. They switched one questionable name for another but that sense of teenage rebellion, anything-could-happen daydreaming and self-belief is still going strong twenty-one years later. Yup, twenty-one years. If Biffy Clyro was an actual person, they’d be having an existential crisis about what to do with their life as their other friends filled their Instagram feeds with careers, children and relationships. In the real world though, Biffy Clyro know exactly what they’re doing. Standing on the edge of ‘Ellipsis’, Simon, James and Ben have created something that’s as confident, wacky and bold as everything they’ve done before. But still different. It’s consistency, but not as you know it.

See, we all like bands to have ‘a journey’. We all like to support them on their way up and ridicule them on their way down. We like ordered lists and for new music to be better or worse than whatever came before. Biffy Clyro are outside those rules, looking in and laughing. Their debut single ‘Iname’ is brilliant. The B-sides, brilliant. Their debut EP ‘Thekidswhopoptodaywillrocktomorrow’ is as brilliant as the title. And not in a, ‘oh, look how much potential these kids have’ way but a ‘these songs are still brilliant, are still played live and are still adored’ way. ‘Don’t believe us? Try arguing with ‘Justboy’. Or ‘57’. Yeah, thought so.