More about: Biffy ClyroNOS Alive

7 July, 2016: Biffy Clyro and their awesome fans storm Nos Alive Festival 2016. See our beautiful photos from the show here.

Crack down at sundown. Biffy Clyro are in uniform, naked from the waist up, and - unlike their glorious home nation - here in temperate Lisbon the balmy evening is giving more than a few people reason to bare flesh.

'Wolves of Winter' is first to rattle through the festival sound system, many decibels louder than the tempered volumes of this festival's UK equivalents, the song will become Biffy's call to arms in what is now their seventh full album/tour cycle.

"Obrigado" Simon Neil offers the locals, his thanks post a blistering rendition of 'Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies'. The Portuguese salutations are well meant but go lost in translation - especially when foreign visitors account for over half the NOS Alive crowd, more than a couple raising the Saltire tonight.

'Friends and Enemies', a new tune with spunky eighties retro-pop style, sounds not light-years from their warm up act The 1975 and certainly supports the Biffy rhetoric - this new record has them throwing in everything but the kitchen sink.

It's familiar favourites, like 'Bubbles', 'The Captain' and 'Mountains', that reliably deliver though, each one sending NOS Alive up in a chorus of rapturous fandom - arms pointed to the sky through each anthemic refrain.

"Can we play all night?" James Johnston queries, "we can jam with The Chemical Brothers." It's a popular suggestion but one that Simon soons puts paid to: "Maybe I'll mind. It's not for me that shit."

'Many of Horror' and 'Stingin' Belle' provide the final sing-alongs before Biffy bid farewell to Lisboa. This monstrous display of force, even with the obvious omissions ('God & Satan', '57' anyone?), bodes well for their much-anticipated return to Reading and Leeds headline duties next month.

More about: Biffy ClyroNOS Alive