Biffy Clyro bring stadium-like energy to Hard Rock Café
Despite its name, the Hard Rock Café in the middle of Dubai Festival City seems like the last place you would expect to see one of the few remaining stadium rock bands set themselves up for an evening.
Chants of “Mon the Biff ” reverberate around the venue with the same fervour as the bands usual tens-of-thousands strong audiences, impressive considering the capacity of this venue is about a tenth of the size.
A deceptively long introduction over the PA brings the crowd to the heights of anticipation before the band appear on stage in a flash of lights; breaking into the heavy opening chords and drumbeat of ‘Wolves of Winter’ set the tone for the evening.
From raw, visceral howling to melodious pop vocals accompanied by fuzzed up distortion delivered with a math-rock like precision, Biffy Clyro are setting a standard, not just for rock bands, but for live music in general.
A refreshingly varied set from the band’s seven albums sees stadium-rock anthems blend into ballads blending into football match-style singalongs that leave a crowd begging for “one more tune” regularly into the night. The band weren’t even halfway through their set when this first occurred…
On the back of this gig, the Scottish trio are showing no signs of slowing down, with an MTV Unplugged set to come out shortly, their eighth studio album in the works, and a movie soundtrack on the horizon, we’re hoping this means that they’ll make their way back to Middle East sooner rather than later.
Let’s just hope this is the beginning of a trend of music that might come through the region.
“Mon the Biff” as they say.
