![]() ![]() ![]() Absolution, Muse’s third studio album is, without doubt, one of my favourite alternative albums yet in a dichotomy that I can’t explain, I have yet to pick up this release on Vinyl or CD, instead choosing to appreciate it via Apple Music an Apple Digital Master. If this is how the world ends, it’s with a bang, not a whimper.I often find myself amused as to just how much I adore the music of Muse, yet how infrequently I reach for their music. As Bellamy himself declares, “Welcome to the desecration, baby / We’ll build you right up and we’ll tear you down / Welcome to the celebration, baby / The chances are turning, this future is ours”. Will Of The People may at times be overdressed for dinner, but it isn’t your average pandemic moan and groan. But in 2022, these paranoid political themes feel especially salient, even given the surrounding sonic absurdity. The album closes with ‘We Are Fucking Fucked’, the title of which is a blunt summary of the agenda Muse have long pursued. Amid Bellamy’s trademark falsetto, Chris Wolstenholme’s fuzzy bass and Dom Howard’s thunderous drums, there are lashings of ethereal piano and heavy metal guitar playing, including a Van Halen-aping solo on standout track ‘You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween’.īellamy’s lyrics encompass Black Lives Matter, wildfires, political discourse, the COVID-19 pandemic, online vitriol, and even the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Opening track, ‘Will Of The People,’ is a stomping call to arms that borrows the chugging beat from Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Beautiful People’ ‘Won’t Stand Down’ and ‘Kill Or Be Killed” hint at the sonic acrobatics of earlier Muse. In the wrong hands, this genre-cluster might lead to self-implosion, but with front person Matt Bellamy at his larger-than-life best throughout, the grandiosity feels like a familiar friend returning home to deliver some hysterical messages. Will Of The People is a whirlwind of genres, with metal, glam rock, synthpop and arena rock all contributing to the mix across the album’s 38 minutes. Many tracks here ooze with paranoia and chaos, but there’s also a lot of fun to be found in this soundtrack to the apocalypse. With Will of the People, the band shed the fictionalised aspects of 2018’s Simulation Theory in favour of something that chimes with the current news cycle. They’ve embraced concept albums, made excursions into dubstep and rock opera, and built an identity founded in predictable unpredictability. ![]() Muse: Will of the People (Warner)īlending elements from Queen and Radiohead with prog experimentation and straight-up bombast, Muse have outlasted many of their contemporaries largely through taking steep diversions from album to album. But while Muse’s ninth album, Will of the People, goes hard on the alarm-raising fanfare, it’s also an authentic snapshot of the current state of the world. It seems inevitable that the British trio would emerge from years of global unrest armed with an album that leans heavily into these themes. Muse have been making a living blasting social, technological, and interpersonal dystopias since exploding into the mainstream at the turn of the century. ![]()
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