This year is Biffy Clyro's 20th anniversary, but you won't see them hatching any special tour plans or album re-releases to capitalize on the round number. Instead, they'll be putting the finishing touches on a new studio album that comes on the heels of their first UK No. 1, 2013's Opposites.
"It's sounding really rocking at the moment," frontman Simon Neil told Q (via NME). "I think it's important to put some more rules and limitations on what we do because on the last few records we ran with whatever ideas we had.
"So on this one, when I say stripped back it's not going to sound skeletal or anything but perhaps a bit more aggressive. Coming off the back of a double album, it's important to be really concise so we might only have ten songs."
Neil said the group currently has 20 songs that are "80 percent done," so cutting down to 10 would likely be an arduous process.
Drummer Ben Johnston recently told NME that Biffy Clyro is not stressed out about the process.
"It's coming along; we're not in any massive rush at all - we don't want to anything that's not perfect," Johnston said. "We're working hard - we've got too many songs, which is great! A great place to be at."
In a rare rock development, the group appears to be completely on schedule. When announcing a B-sides compilation last January, Neil was prescient about Clyro's future studio predicament.
"We've got about four songs written on piano at the moment and we have about six or seven riffs, too," he said. "The genesis of the next album is there, I suppose ... I think we'll record the next album in 2015."
Check out a cut from Similarities, that aforementioned B-side release that dropped in July:
