“Starlight” is all wide-open harmony, huge-arena pop prog a triumphant tenor melody and Bellamy’s floating-in, floating-out falsetto (backed by those familiar string arpeggios). But second or third time, Muse’s little excursion has a familiarity, in the way the bassline splinters and blossoms into chorus (despite the vocals).Įlsewhere, classic Muse themes and tropes resurface in a fresh way. First listen to that song and you’re thrown almost completely off - all processed beats, wailing Justin Hawkins-with-a-throat-lozenge vocals, swish-swish nu-metal guitars - not the best first impression. Muse impresses, and continues to impress on Black Holes, not only because they have the Romantic classical harmony-fueled huge stadium sound down pat, but in the details that show a band mature and talented: the way the string arpeggios morph into electronics on “Take a Bow”, for instance, or the way singer Matt Bellamy’s voice floats in multi-tracked prog splendour in the chorus of “Supermassive Black Hole”.
None of this is entirely a bad thing - not a bad thing at all. In this context of political outrage, you’d think love/out-of-love songs like “Starlight” or “Map of the Problematique” would sit awkwardly, but Muse’s approach to love is as theatrical and underlined as the band’s approach to politics. Maybe it’s over-exposure, but most agit-pop that seeks to express outrage through bombast somehow is survived more by its feeling than by the content but lyrics like those from the incendiary opener “Take a Bow” (“You corrupt & bring corruption to all that you touch… cast a spell on the country you run… you will burn in hell for your sins”) - or the call to “Aim, shoot, kill your leaders” on “Assassin” - are likely to peg the album to its time fairly tightly. Instead, the pianistic virtuosity has been somewhat replaced by orchestral-melded electronic synths, disco-goth beats, and political truisms. Perfection of something as yet half-formed? Not quite, since Black Holes doesn’t have a supermassive hit like “Muscle Museum” or “Sing For Absolution” - and Muse’s MOA is generic enough to promise a continued generation of the kind of orchestral hard rock anthems that has characterized Showbiz, Origin of Symmetry and Absolution. Yeah, black holes, revelations.Īlbum number four from the other Oxford band finds Muse not so much pushing forward as exploring edges of an already established sound.
MUSE BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS YEAR FREE
Muse has been all of these things over the course of its history, and the band is free now to relax into its songs, comfortable with melodic tropes and familiar, apocalyptic imagery. Of course Mars is an appropriate planet for a Muse-led soundtrack - combative, belligerent and ultimately glorious. That’s true - August 27, 2006, Earth - Mars = 34,649,589 miles, closest for the next 60,000 years at least, a moon-bright, red ball of fierce bravado. You may have received the email forward: This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.
Call it good timing: but the photograph on the inside cover of the new Muse album shows a magnified image of Mars.
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