Monday 1 October 2012

Muse Suffering From Obesity

Every time the British rockers of Muse released a new album you didn't know what you were going to get. However you did know it was going to be bigger than the last album. Black Holes And Revelations was already balancing on the edge of credibility and I was hoping they would choose another direction and maybe even go to a more modest and intimate sound after that. Instead on The Resistance they blew it up to an even bigger and more bombastic sound. And that's when they lost me.

Muse - The 2nd Law (Ronald Says 5 out of 10)

And I won't cut around the bush. They continued on the journey of inflating their own sound and are now light years away from the point where it's still pleasant and interesting to listen to. The 2nd Law is so chuck full of musical directions, ideas and bombast, that it just has turned plain ugly. It's like a body builder so pumped up, filled with steroids that he turned into a cartoon version of a real man. When I listen to it, I get visions of the fat man in Monty Python's 'The Meaning Of Life': the album is trying to absorb so much that it explodes. Muse have created this monster that just keeps swallowing more than it can hold and they can't control it any more.

Just listen to the first two songs 'Supremacy' and 'Madness'. It's as if they were trying to put every band they admire into their songs. Queen? Check. Led Zeppelin? Check. U2? Check. Radiohead? Check. Not crazy enough for you? Let's throw some orchestral and classical parts to the mix. For the first time two Muse songs are without the vocals of Matt Bellamy. Bass player Chris Wolstenholme is getting the honours here. 'Save Me' definitely won't go down as one of their best songs ever. And you can hear him again on 'Liquid State', which is an average prog rock song that isn't actually that bad, but it feels completely out of place.

I'm not even going near the horrible dubstep experiments 'Follow Me' and 'The 2nd Law: Unsustainable'. Muse have created their own black hole which just sucks up everything that comes near. They have become their own troubled universe, a cartoon world where everything is blown out of proportions. In 'Animals'which is actually one of the few decent enough songs on the album, Bellamy is singing "Out of control/We’re out of control/Crush those who beg at your feet". I guess they are aware of it themselves by now as well.





Listen to 'The 2nd Law' on Spotify.



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2 comments:

  1. Your getting old. This album is a masterpiece, a piece de resistance. It shows that there was and is still a form of evolution possible for Muse. The album defines a new era, say goodbye to U2 welcome the era of Muse.

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  2. It's a fact that I'm getting old. A review is always just another opinion. I'm glad you like the album.

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