Opposites: Biffy Clyro's career defining masterpiece or pompous double album drivel?

Double albums have something of a reputation for disaster. While well received at the time, Guns n' Rose's 1991 Use Your Illusion I and II are now regarded as bloated records with few redeeming features, and Green Day's recent triple Uno, Dos and Tre are considered among the worst releases of the band's long career. It takes a certain kind of group to create a great double album; The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Pink Floyd are among those who have truly, brilliantly succeeded. And now Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro can enter this exclusive club: Opposites is perhaps Biffy's best album to date.

With Opposites, Biffy have opted to split the record into two separate mini albums: The Sand at the Core of our Bones and The Land at the End of our Toes, each comprised of ten songs and checking in at around forty minutes each. As the album's title suggests, each mini album contrasts with the other, The Sand giving a more reflective, dwelling feeling in it's music and lyrics, and The Land looking towards the future. It's worth noting that this two disc setup is vastly superior to alternative: a single album made up of fourteen selected tracks, as while this collects the greatest hits of the double, it lacks the moods and feelings created by listing to one of the mini albums.

Musically, Biffy Clyro are on top of their game, with each mini album featuring anthemic numbers including Black Chandelier, Sounds Like Balloons and Biblical on The Sand, and Stingin' Belle, Modern Magic Formula and Victory Over the Sun on The Land, all of which will surely become classics of Biffy Clyro's career and firm fan favourites. Each mini album features consistently superb songs, tearing through one hit after another. Frontman Simon Neil's vocals and guitar are at their best, with the bass and drums provided by brothers James and Ben Johnston creating the impressive sound of a band utterly united, a remarkable feat considering the group's struggle with alcoholism in recent years.

It's by no means a perfect pair, certain tracks inevitable fail to keep to the high standard of the albums' best and there's some lyrical questionably, but overall Opposites is both musically superb and a brilliantly functioning double album. In an age dominated by the shuffle, The Sand at the Core of our Bones and The Land at the End of our Toes are examples of those occasional sublime pieces of power that demand to be listened to from start to finish, an extremely rare accomplishment. Album of the year? Hell yes.

9/10

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: Bowie's greatest gift to humanity?

At 41 years old, you might be forgiven for assuming that David Bowie's seminal concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars today seems a bloated and irrelevant piece of pompous glam rock nonsense. Of course, you couldn't be more wrong, because Ziggy Stardust remains as majestically regal as the day it was released upon the world in 1972.

The album loosely follows the tale of Ziggy Stardust, a rockstar whose songs are used by aliens to spread their messages over humanity. As a concept, it's as delightfully absurd and ridiculous as you would expect looking back at Bowie's back catalogue. However, it's worth remembering that at the time of release the man voted the greatest solo artist of all time by NME readers was just a pale youth is one major hit (Space Oddity) to his name. The bizarre characters, manic costumes and legendary world tours were all ahead of him, and no-one had done anything quite like Ziggy Stardust before. This was new. Brand new.

But enough on ideas, how does Ziggy's music stand up today? From the crescendo of desperation and despair of opener Five Years to the oh-so-danceable riff of Suffragette City to the bittersweet, powerful melody of final track Rock n' Roll Suicide, it's clear that this is an album as musically rich and divers as Bowie's own legendary career. With Mick Ronson providing truly classic performances on guitar and piano and Trevor Bolder throwing in superb bass riffs, Bowie's wonderful vocals are perfectly complimented on this collection of songs. Ziggy's story is well told through music, with songs such as Star reflecting the heights of his game and Rock n' Roll Suicide documenting his tragic end.

It's not that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars hasn't aged a day: in fact it's taken on a new maturity and depth as the years have gone by, and now represents a stunning early stage in Bowie's career. Stardust is perhaps Bowie's greatest character, and his album is perhaps his greatest gift to the world.

9/10

Hotline Miami: a phenomenal new approach to gaming storytelling

The delightful thing about Hotline Miami is that it's totally unspecific. You play as an unnamed protagonist tasked with various tasks of ultra violence, but who that character is is up to you. Perhaps you're a professional assassin, charging premium prices for your macabre services. Maybe you're an innocent man, forced into murder against your will. Or you might be a drug addled psychopath, simply killing as you please. The choice is yours, because this wonderful guilty pleasure of a game never explains it.
 

Your mission in Hotline Miami is simple: each mission sees you receive an anonymous phone call informing you of your destination, before you travel to the location and kill everyone inside. Like your character, who the enemies actually are is never revealed, leaving it up to you to create your own story. Of course, it's more difficult than it sounds; your opponents and intelligent and well armed, meaning that you must make use of a variety of weapons, strategies and power-ups to destroy the opposition. In addition, one hit from any weapon will end your quest, but respawn is instantaneous, making for an incredibly fast paced experience.
 

This pacing fits perfectly into the game's 1980's setting, and is powered along by a truly stunning soundtrack. The top-down view and pixelated graphics only add to this nostalgic feeling. Of course, this superb sense of style would be nothing if the game wasn't fun to play, but it is. Brilliantly. There is huge freedom of choice in how you take out your enemies, you can go in all guns blazing, or attempt to silently eliminate the antagonists. Inevitably, you're going to die, a lot. But the game actively encourages this, and as you are immediately returned to the game once you are killed there is plenty of room for experimentation. This all leads to supremely addictive and incredibly enjoyable gameplay.
 

What we have with Hotline Miami is a game that provides both flawless gameplay and a great new take on gaming storytelling, giving the player the power to use their imagination to create their own story. This stunning innovation and fabulous stylishness makes giving Hotline Miami a perfect score an absolute no-brainer (no pun intended).
 

10/10
Reviewed for PC.

Kick Ass 2: more violence, swearing and mayhem, but does it pack the punch of the original?

In a year of bloated superhero blockbusters, Kick Ass was a breath of fresh air when it exploded onto our screens in 2010. It perfectly parodied the clichés which had come to dominate fantasy cinema in hail of demented ultra-violence and obscene language. But has new director Jeff Wadlow created a sequel worthy of the fantastic guilty pleasure that Kick Ass was?


All the ingredients which made Kick Ass great are still here; colourful vigilantes, scheming villains and dark, dark humour. And yet, throughout the film you get the distinct impression that something is missing. Perhaps it's that the element of surprise which helped Kick Ass stun and shock its audiences is almost impossible to recapture in a sequel. Kick Ass 2 instead opts to recycle so much of the original film that it looses much of it's impact. While a lethal 11 year old assassin slaughtering a gang of thugs in the first Kick Ass both amazed and offended thousands of cinema goers, such action seems predictable and almost directly lifted in Kick Ass 2.

Much of the cast of Kick Ass return for the sequel, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson reprising his role as makeshift hero Kick Ass. However, only Chloë Grace Moretz's teenage vigilante Hit Girl truly shines here, living up to the high standard she set in Kick Ass with another perfect performance. It's a shame that the script gives her little screen time as the violent costumed warrior, preferring to cast her as Mindy MacCready, the teenager behind the mask, attempting to find her place in normal school life, but once again Moretz creates a brilliantly believable character. Unfortunately, a little of the shine of the other characters has been lost during the transition between original and sequel, with neither Kick Ass or antagonist Chris D'Amico (Christoper Mintz-Plasse) giving as convincing or driven performances as they portrayed in the first film. It's possibly because some of the focus of the original Kick Ass has been lost on a whole host of supporting characters, notably Jim Carrey's Colonel Stars and Stripes.

While Kick Ass's violence was extreme, the bombastic and humorous nature of the film prevented it from entering the realm of true bad taste. Jim Carrey's disownership of the film might have suggested that there is more violence here than in the original Kick Ass, but this is not the case. However, while Kick Ass 2's violence is little more deranged than the original's, in attempting to make the film darker and more gritty the scriptwriter has inadvertently pushed certain scenes out of the comic book halo surrounding the film, an attempted rape played for laughs making particularly grim viewing. And unlike Kick Ass, the script lacks emotional attachment, so when likeable characters are killed the film goes straight back to cracking jokes, which rather numbs the audience's feelings for the deceased characters.

Still, maybe I'm being too harsh. Kick Ass 2 has brilliantly succeeded in creating what is for the most part a gloriously entertaining film, which is what made Kick Ass so wonderful in the first place. It might not be as close to perfect escapism as the first film, but, as you might have guessed from the title, it still kicks plenty of ass.

6/10