Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil has opened up about what to expect from his upcoming solo album as ZZC – saying it will be dance-y and surprising.

Neil revealed his solo project ZZC back in 2014, when he contributed a track to the rescoring of the ‘Drive’ soundtrack alongside Chvrches, The 1975 and more. Following on from his side-project Maraduke Duke, Neil will be going it alone with a new release next year. Now, he’s spoken to Kerrang! about how it will sound.

“I’m reticent to say ‘solo’,” said Neil. “It’s another outlet, I guess. It’s a purely electronic album. I wrote it and made it when I was trying to make ‘Ellipsis’ and I was worried about writing a Biffy song and making it as good as all our other songs. That wasn’t working so I had to go away and make some different music.”


He continued: “I ended up making this dance record. It’s quite sparse. Some of it’s ambient, some of it’s hilarious. There’s not a guitar on it. It’ll be called ZZC but if you Google ‘ZZC’ it comes up as a Japanese porn site. I really should have checked.”

Speaking to NME about the project back in 2014, Neil said: After the first three Biffy albums, I went and made the Marmaduke Duke stuff [Neil’s other side-project, featuring Sucioperro guitarist JP Reid] to try and cleanse myself and come back to rock music re-charged. I’ve been in that zone for the last few months, working on piano and electronic stuff, more kind of soundtrack-y things. So I’ll get that out while we’re making the Biffy record, because it reinstills my belief in rock music, my love of screaming and smacking guitars. It’s just what I need.”

Biffy Clyro will be headlining Download Festival 2017 alongside System Of A Down and Aerosmith next June.