Gig review: Biffy Clyro at The Piece Hall, Halifax
At their lone warm-up for a Victorious headline slot across the Bank Holiday weekend, the Kilmarnock rock heavyweights take off with fighter jet velocity and thrilling power.
“Good evening Halifax, we’ve missed you so much,” Simon Neil half-croons with a grin, flyaway hair whipped by the evening breeze. “We are Biffy f***ing Clyro.”
The roar from the Piece Hall is loud enough to shake the Square Church spire that towers over the Calderdale venue; behind him, brothers James and Ben Johnston exchange adrenalized smiles. The joy at this first show since 2022 is physically palpable.
The Kilmarnock rock heavyweights occupy a strange position in the British musical hierarchy. For a period, they were arguably the nation’s biggest guitar band, rivalled perhaps only by Arctic Monkeys or Muse. But the final step never came their way, in the shape of a bill-topping Pyramid Stage slot at Glastonbury, and the rest of the country’s cultural landscape almost passed them by.
That is not to say their appearance in this Grade I-listed courtyard is anything but a coup – tickets reportedly sold faster for this show than any other in the venue’s history. But amid a festival season where eyebrows have been raised over the paucity of cross-generational appeal and arms-aloft anthems, this lone warmup for a Victorious headline gig across the Bank Holiday weekend suggests the Southsea event have pulled off a superb result.
Certainly, on the merits of live performance, they have; Biffy Clyro remain among the most heady rock acts of the past few decades to emerge from these shores. In a 95-minute set stuffed to the gills, they open with the soaring supremacy of The Captain and barely look back, swinging through a oeuvre that covers alt-metal thrash – That Golden Rule – and ABBA-esque rock-on-steroids – Who’s Got a Match? – with the kind of velocity exclusively reserved for fighter jets.
Two years off has not dulled Neil’s senses; his voice, as adaptable to the lighters-out balladry of Biblical as it is the proggy wobble of Different People, remains a fourth instrument with terrific value for the group, powering the swaggering groove behind Animal Style and fan favourite Saturday Superhouse too. It sounds practically naked on a violin-scored edition of the gorgeous Machines, and the hushed reaction leaves him visibly overawed.
“It’s been such a pleasure playing for you, Halifax,” he murmurs, before he lets the crowd carry the refrain on a climactic Many of Horror, still one of the great skyscraper tunes of their generation. It is a magical climax to a magnificent return.