Muse: The Resistance
Muse: The Resistance
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By Matt Fortune. |  |
Monday, 14, Sep 2009 12:16
Warner, out September 14th.
In a nutshell...
Grand, accomplished and utterly insane, without a hint of shame.
What's it all about?
The fifth album by Muse, The Resistance was recorded in northern Italy over the last year and produced by the band themselves with mixing from Mike 'Spike' Stent. Their first album since the Mercury-nominated Black Holes and Revelations (2006), The Resistance sees the three-piece offering up their most spectacular work yet, with a variety of international and classical influences and the inclusion of the three-part Exogenesis symphony, a long-time project for frontman Matt Bellamy.
Who's it by?
Formed in Teignmouth, Devon, in 1994, Brit winners Muse comprise of Matt Bellamy (vocals), Chris Wolstenholme (bass) and Dominic Howard (drums). With two Brits, six NME awards and four Kerrang! prizes under their belts, as well as two historic sell-out shows at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium, The Resistance sees the trio returning after a year-long break from the stage and a European, US and UK tour on the horizon as they look to regain the crown of best live band in the world.
As an example...
"Love is our resistance/They keep us apart and they won't stop breaking us down." - The Resistance
"You and me fall in line/To be punished for unproven crimes/And we know that there is no one we can trust/Our ancient heroes, they are turning to dust." - Undisclosed Desires
"The wavelength gently grows/Coercive notions re-evolve/A universe is trapped inside a tear/It resonates the core/Creates unnatural laws/Replaces love and happiness with fear." - MK Ultra
'Uprising' teaser video
What the others say
"Far from being Radiohead for thickos - or Coldplay fronted by David Icke - on Resistance, Muse prove that they could be the last in a line of great British rock eccentrics, a trio of mad professors who should be cherished. And if you don't agree, you're clearly being controlled by shape-shifting lizards." - John Lewis, Uncut
"After the bombastic apotheosis of 2007's two-night stand at the new Wembley Stadium, Muse had two options. Either retreat into their shell and record that acoustic set of 19th-century West Country folk songs, or continue along the trajectory laid out for them by the wilfully apocalyptic Black Holes & Revelations - ie to infinity and beyond. While it's no surprise that Muse have chosen the latter course, the wholeheartedness with which this album hurls itself into the abyss of cod-symphonic astral pretension is to be commended." - Ben Thompson, Observer
So is it any good?
When you seem to have reached your creative and commercial peak with an album that won critical acclaim and saw you crowned the best live band in the world, there should really only be one way to go. Muse, however, have long proved they don't play by the rules and whether it's sticking one in the eye of their one-time teenage detractors with a rapturous beachfront homecoming show, or concluding an album of unashamedly grandiose rock with a three-part symphony, they've confirmed that they remain peerless in modern British music. Even Radiohead fail to show the same devil-may-care approach to courting both critical and commercial approval as Muse and in the magnificent, almost passionately indulgent approach of their fourth album The Resistance, Matt Bellamy and co have firmly stated they're in a class of their own.
There's a confidence to the album throughout, whether in the gloss and expanse of Doctor Who-meets-Call Me single Uprising or the surprising success of an excursion into Timbaland-esque slick R 'n' B on Undisclosed Desires. For the latter, imagine Marilyn Manson taking on a Leona Lewis effort and you're in the correct and very strange ball park.
The band's lack of real sparring partner is evident in the Orwellian epic United States of Eurasia, which seems initially to revist those early Radiohead comparisons before embarking on a multi-tracked and operatic middle eight with the bombast of We Are the Champions-era Queen, before tumbling into an outro that recalls Stravinsky and Chopin. Alex Turner might still have a way with a beguiling lyric as his band matures and divides opinion, but a classically-tinged future Arctics album seems a prospect too ludicrous to imagine. For Muse, it's a self-appointed peak they scale with aplomb.
The successful formula of extravagant space rock has been developed and perfected on The Resistance and for those who've followed Muse's quickening journey into galaxies unknown, the boldest parts of the album will seem fitting and as satisfying as a gourmet meal. Its flaws are, in one sense, negligible - for those who never got Muse, there's little here to convert them. The Tsarist grandeur of I Belong To You or the skyscraper melodies of Guiding Light will only confirm for those immune to Muse's charms that they're a band who forego emotional connection and humanity in favour of overblown self-indulgence. In the album's most excessive moments, you begin to see their point.
The human touch, however, is alive and well in the closing Exogenesis triptych, an achingly beautiful symphony that touches on Kubrick, Clint Mansell's soundtrack for The Fountain and Debussy. Even if The Resistance proves the band's final voyage into the unknown before a return to more earthly concerns, the wonderfully flowering themes of the Exogenesis trilogy confirm Matt Bellamy is more than ready to follow Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood into classical composition.
This is a daring, uncompromising and aurally thrilling album which couldn't care less if the unconvinced will remain so - for the already converted listeners, The Resistance is a perfect sermon of pomp and cosmic ambition.
8/10
Lewis Bazley