There sort of is a thing with bands that garner more attention than others over the span of their careers in Britain, right? I mean, first we had the Beatles, then we had Pink Floyd, Queen, Iron Maiden, and then we had Radiohead, and what do we have in the 21th century? Apparently, there is this Devon trio, they're named after the old Greek goddesses of music, they sound like all the bands I mentioned before (except maybe The Beatles), and what's more: they can do it without looking silly.
Now be warned: if you are afraid of pomp, pretensions, ambition, and if you hate a band's tendency to try and sound bigger, more extraterrestrial, more otherworldly than they already do, you won't like Muse at all. This is the sort of record where grandiose rock blasters are followed by what sounds like a Viennese Waltz, Rachmaninov-inspired classical inspired piano interrupts a crescent rock song and funky bass lines mix with Nirvana-era grungy power-chords. If you don't mind that, in every song, there are five different themes battling for air, you can read on.
Par exemple, Lead single Time Is Running Out begins with some fuzzy distorted bass guitar, but as Matt croons out he's addicted and "he wants the friction", suddenly he lets his guitars chug like Alice in Chains/Soundgarden, and out of nowhere a catchy chorus appears, that gets catchier everytime you hear it. Sing for Absolution pulls the volume down one or two notches, but after some nice inspired piano tingling we hear that guitar-solo-effect-thingy again, as if just the theme of piano rustling in the background wasn't enough and Bellamy decided some Metallica-influences must feature before he lets the volume crash down again.
Or there's the snarling, powered-up riffs of Stockholm Syndrome waltzing around at punk time tempos, all that with buzzing distortion, and over-the-top falsetto vocals to add to it. And if you're tired of all this bustling busybody energetic blah blah Muse dabble in, what's better than to relax with the gorgeous ballad Falling Away With You, or the meshy classically inspired Blackout. There even is possible escapism to be found on the Radiohead-aping Endlessly, which sounds like Muse came from Mars and not from Earth.
Unfortunately, this album falters at some points. The aforementioned Endlessly does indeed indulge in Radiohead-isms and Bellamy sounds like he's Yorke's long lost twin, but for all the Oxfordisms it's also equally boring. Ruled By Secrecy is a nice driven piano tune, but by comparison to what else is on here, it sounds rather mundane and tepid. And there's no denying the piano skills of Bellamy on Butterflies and Hurricanes, but don't you just think that in the middle of a building song such a break disrupts the flow of the Muse-ic?
Apart from these teensy tiny little snags in the road, Muse do show that if there are bands that want to take over the helm and become the new Pink Floyd, the new Radiohead, the band of their 21st century cell phone generation, they want to be up there. It's ambitious. It's extraterrestial. It's undoubtedly pompous and dramatic, more than any of the other bands together except perhaps Queen. But at the end of day, this album is still going to be one of your favourites just because it's good enough to sound solid and coherent between all the different things going on. Hysteria, indeed.
