When approaching the creation of any review piece, sometimes the simplest journalistic processes are the most successful. The ‘Five W’s’ technique, for example, can help to provide valuable insight in as few words as possible.

Who: Scottish rag-tag riff merchants Biffy Clyro
What: Live music culled from all four of their increasingly heavy albums
Where: Hi-fi Bar, Melbourne
When: May 18th 2010
Why: To expand their ever growing fan base in Australia.

Et Voila, article written, but for the inclusion of the most pertinent questions of all: Would anyone have imagined a band from rural carpet factory Kilmarnock breaking onto the international music scene so successfully? Does this tour represent the final stages in Biffy’s transition from Indie noise peddlers to bona fide rock monolith? How does lead singer Neil Simon sing through that great big bushy beard? Undoubtedly this night would yield all the solutions to these equations, but first there was the small matter of a support band.

These Hand Could Separate The Sky begin to play in the same manner in which they took to the stage; casual, unobtrusive and with silent aplomb. Crafting a dreamy mix of delay soaked strings and simple drum beats they may have gone unnoticed in a larger venue, but as their first songs swell and wash around the walls of the Hi-fi, heads begin to turn. And nod. To an extent.

Comparisons to Explosions In The Sky are not unfair or probably unwelcome, but for all the wonderment and whale song, the lack of vigour and vocal does little to feed a hungry crowd. Like a poet before a bullfight, much of the beauty is lost on a horde baying for blood, which is a shame, since they’d probably go okay played quietly on your bedroom stereo in the dark.

The onus falls on Biffy then to fire some life back into the basement, a request duly obliged with a brutal one-two opening of That Golden Rule and Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies. A (relatively) shaven Neil rasps out lyrics with lung scorching honesty while twins James and Ben Johnston pummel the front row with unfailingly tight rhythm. Placing a microphone at moshpit level for Living is a Problem… Neil invites the audience to sing along while he twitches and jerks along to the frenetic shrieks from his guitar, all the polish of the recorded version scoured from the surface.

In a set unsurprisingly heavy on tracks from Puzzle and Only Revolutions, Biffy prosper by doing what bigger bands have mistakenly been doing in reverse for years; playing their newest material as if it was released on their first album. Cloud Of Stink and Who’s Got A Match may well march triumphantly on record; live they positively sprint into battle, roaring with gusto.

While crowd interaction is minimal, probably wise since the majority of the audience would struggle to comprehend the accent, Neil’s mumble that “We’re playing new songs and old songs tonight” gets through okay Despite polarising the audience in places, the dusted off classics sound remarkably comfortable in amongst the new blood. Glitter And Trauma and Convex, Concave especially remind us why the only sound heard between songs at Biffy gigs of old was the splash of grown men’s tears into pints of Scottish stout.

The set suffers only when the boys from the home of Johnnie Walker take their foot off the gas. As on their albums, the songs with lower blood pressure just don’t translate as well from instrument to ear, but for the strange exception of the usually turgid Machines, which is received by an enthusiastic sing-a-long. God and Satan, though, while initially eliciting a sprinkle of lofted lighters, ultimately begins to drain the energy that the threesome had battled so hard to maintain.

For all the attending recent converts bemused by the strange sounds of tracks from 2002’s Blackened Sky, or the idle chit-chat during the gig’s mellower moments, every misstep is forgiven when Biffy launch into rapturous concert closer, The Captain. A perfect blend of the band’s sense of humour, obscure tendencies and hard rock aspirations, complete with Woah-Ohs and Woohs. As the last chords ring out the audience considers: maybe Biffy Clyro do have all the great answers to all these great questions.

CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM THE HIFI HERE