Biffy Clyro at The Dome by Nick Aldwinckle

Similar in sound and cult status to nineties Britpop survivors Idlewild, Kilmarnock pop-rockers Biffy Clyro share their countrymen's knack for an infectious pop hook combined with a jagged guitar burst and the innate ability to inspire lighter-waving adoration. Tonight's venue, Brighton Dome, is cavernous in comparison to stages the band played just a few years ago; it's telling that this near-capacity crowd laps up every word uttered by heartthrob frontman Simon  Neil and, indeed, knows every idiosyncratic line. Biffy is now a big deal. Christ, they've even got a fancy lighting rig a la REM to dazzle the senses.

No-one can say Biffy haven't earned their stripes. Coming up through the ranks of underground indie rockers over nearly a decade of hard-touring and relentless writing and recording, they could almost be forgiven for letting things go a bit and just chilling out on stage. Thankfully, within milliseconds of the first number, Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies, the bombastic opener to 2007's breakthrough record, Puzzle, it's obvious Neil and rhythm section brothers James and Ben Johnston show no sign of letting up. Lively, joyous pop thrashing drives the crowd to frenzy, immediately inspiring crowd-surfing and a bustling not-quite moshpit.

A very Puzzle-heavy set does everything the album dictates it should: energetic grunge guitar gallops Get Fucked Stud and Who's Got A Match are stapled between the deceptively sweet-sounding strains of Love Has A Diameter and the complex, not-a-note wrong operatic extremity of 9/15ths to give a thorough overview of the eclecticism that makes Biffy so damned great. Though predominantly newer material, a few old favourites are thrown in for good measure, dating right back to debut album Blackened Sky's highpoints Justboy and Blackened Sky. Songs this good never age; it's a mark of the band's early writing ability that they're the gig's highlights too.

Offering a sneak preview from fifth album, Only Revolutions, recent single The Captain is a solid stab at old-school Biffy anthem-building, as is the fist-in-the-air earnestness of Mountains. The crowd, of course, lap this up, though it feels like there's something amiss in the new material. If these few new songs are anything to go by, success may have diminished the blazing ambition that made Puzzle such a huge success. Though undoubtedly Biffy, with the tight-as-hell precision and emotional intensity of old, there seem to be none of the creative flourishes that marked the bold forward strides between each of the last four albums. We're excited, but maybe a little mentally undernourished by this slight smell of complacency.

The cover of this week's Kerrang may say it all about Biffy Clyro: the headline, "Rock's Next Superstars" is pretty much identical to most of the band's press of two years ago. Though undoubtedly now a big band, with a UK number two album under their belt, it may well be that their career has plateaued at the giddy heights they've already reached.

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