If it weren’t for those pesky health and safety regulations, the band’s frontman Matthew Bellamy would have had acrobats hanging off helicopters at their (double sell-out) Wembley gig in 2007.Īt that time the group were touring their fourth album Blackholes and Revelations, which was critically feted as a more polished and overblown version of their previous masterpiece Absolution. In fact, with listeners allergic to purchasing music but never to seeing their fave rockers on stage, Muse are with the enviable distinction of being this decade’s most outrageous stadium-fillers. Yet unlike Green Day, no band has had the audacity or skill to copy them. Indeed, the group is to progressive rock what Green Day is to punk: a self-aware caricature of that genre based on their indulging in undying schoolboy fascinations with OTT (over-the-top) sounds, OTT ideas and OTT arenas. The wonder is why so many critics likened Muse to Radiohead rather than to Queen.
The Devonshire threesome are best known for setting their anarcho-paranoiac thrills alight with sonic extravaganzas that beg to soundtrack a version of We Will Rock You if it were modeled on War of the Worlds and starred Winston Smith as protagonist. Does Muse seem as relevant as ever? In a year that marks the 60th anniversary of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four while pregnant with reinvigorated conspiracy theories, books on paranoia and worries about Google surveillance, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? Alas, their latest album doesn’t rise to the occasion.
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