Biffy Clyro at Sydney’s Roundhouse – review and photos
Teenage Joans opened the night— Adelaide duo Cahli Blakers and Tahlia Borg—bringing a sharp, unfiltered energy that cut through early. There were a few technical hiccups, but it didn’t derail the set. If anything, it made it feel more human. What carries them is the core of what they’re doing: meaningful songs that lean into identity, relationships, and the mess of growing up without overcomplicating it. There’s a confidence in that simplicity. It set the tone without trying to overstate it.
I last saw Biffy Clyro live in 2021, in Cardiff Bay, UK — on a date with the man I now call my husband. He was shooting the band, and had asked me to join him to review them, knowing I was a big fan. It was the start to what would become the basis of our favourite way to spend time together, with Biffy our first backdrop.
For a band that sound this large, it’s easy to forget how little there is on stage. At their core, Biffy are still a three-piece— built on a kind of internal chemistry that doesn’t really need explaining. The space between the parts matters as much as the parts themselves.
They’ve spent decades refining something that doesn’t quite fit a single shape.
Early records like Blackened Sky and The Vertigo of Bliss were jagged, unpredictable—songs that bent in directions most bands wouldn’t risk. Over time, that instinct didn’t disappear, it just scaled. By the time they were headlining festivals across the UK, that same unpredictability was sitting inside songs big enough for tens of thousands of people to shout back. It’s a difficult balance to hold, and they’ve made it feel natural.
That history sits quietly underneath everything they play now. The sound is huge, deliberate, completely controlled, yet somehow enables you to feel beautifully out of control in the crowd, to express in raw format.
At the Roundhouse, it doesn’t shrink—it concentrates. The room holds everything close, and the band respond by tightening the set rather than opening it out. It feels physical. Immediate. Simon Neil is relentless at the centre of it. Within minutes he’s drenched, moving constantly, still throwing his whole body into the songs in a way that feels instinctive. There’s nothing held back in it.
Ben Johnston drives everything forward from behind the kit—precise, heavy, locked in. Even with James Johnston absent, his presence is still built into the songs themselves, particularly in the vocal interplay that’s always been central to how Biffy carry emotion without overstating it. Naomi Macleod steps into that interplay easily on this tour, bringing a confident, assured presence, adding a sharpness that sits naturally within the band.
The set runs straight through, older songs sitting alongside the newer material without any sense of distance between them. Black Chandelier settles in early, that underlying unease still sitting just beneath it. Biblical follows and lands in a way that feels lived-in—people holding onto the words rather than just throwing them back.
Mountains shifts the room outward for a moment, that familiar lift running through it, before it drops back into The Captain, hitting with a certainty that doesn’t need explaining. When Many of Horror comes in, it’s already waiting, and the room answers immediately—loud and imperfect. It’s a song that’s long since moved beyond being part of any set. It belongs to the people. And that’s really the thread running through all of it. These aren’t songs that sit in a fixed moment, they’ve carried people through years of change, loss, growth— and you can feel that weight in how they’re met.
Biffy Clyro have been doing this long enough to understand exactly what these songs are capable of, and they let them do just that. Mon the Biff.
Review by Chloe Davis-Powell. Photos by Adam Davis-Powell.
