Muse – The Resistance
Muse are epic. Muse are the last in a long line of British stadium sized entertainers. Muse are the bastard sons of Freddy Mercury and Brian May.
The Titanic was epic. Stadium gigs have and always will be as soulless as the £4.50 pint of Carlsberg you sip whilst watching them and Queen bar a small clutch of decent singles were Earth-shatteringly abysmal. All of which bode badly for The Resistance, an album recorded by the UK’s in every respect ‘biggest’ rock band with the primary intention of consolidating this position.
Not that the Teignmouth trio make any apologies for such an ambitious stance. If you were left wondering whether Matt Bellamy could play out his intergalactic super-battles on any larger scale after Knights of Cydonia then United States Of Eurasia puts pay to that. Morphing as standard Muse formula dictates from a minimalist tinkling of the ivories to kitchen sink falsetto chanting, for a band famed for their eccentricity it offers an unnerving air of predictability.
The same corrosive theme pervades lead single Uprising which in spite of restraining itself to the oddity of a Doctor Who theme tune tribute still manages to rank up the melodrama with a chorus revolving around the chant “They will not force us / They will stop degrading us”. Worse still, though the strands of revolution and Big Brother authority have formed a common weave in the Muse back catalogue, there’s no longer the underlying menace that gave Muscle Museum and Apocalypse Please their predatory forcefulness.
Without this glimmer of violence behind Bellamy’s warbling, the slap bass and orchestral tip toes that make up Undisclosed Desires are as terrifying as the Joker after an appearance on Snog, Marry, Avoid. Similarly I Belong To You’s hand claps and good times piano line bring to mind the sound of a cheery knees up at Mos Eisley’s best Irish tavern.
All else failing though, the record’s concluding thirteen minute diorama of space age misery Exogenesis should prove a saving grace as the fusion of classical composition and power chords has always been a calling card of these cosmic cowboys. Strangely enough however, this is the moment Muse chose to pull in the reigns and let the overture do the talking.
That said overture never quite decides whether to kick into hyper-drive or to continue in the smug footsteps of it’s own pitter patter just about sums up The Resistance. It’s a toothless album that trades in past unpredictability for comfort in an even larger sound forgetting that ‘epic’ wasn’t the reason why so many became so smitten with Muse in the first place.
4/10
This seems like it was a review that set out to be negative from the start. Mainly due to the comment under last week’s HAARP recommendation…
This album never claims to be the same old Muse. It’s meant to be developed Muse, and an evolution of their sound. If a band found one sound and stuck to it, they would be branded as same-y, dull, stuck-in-a-rut etc. What, would you say, is the reason people became ‘smitten with Muse’? It definitely wasn’t the likes of ‘Jimmy Kane’ for me. The Resistance is precisely the kind of bombastic, grandiloquent sound that Muse now represent. And I love it.
Thanks for the contribution, although in all fairness the HAARP recommendation was done by me and Rob’s review is completely separate from it.
Oh, I didn’t see that bit.. Still, I thought it was a a good review. Well-written, just not well-opinioned!
I’d give it more a 5/6 to be honest but still don’t think much of it…but this is someone who loved Black Holes when everyone else hated it.
Alex… I loved Black Holes as well!
this review smells of pitchfork. i now await the reviewer to go all pretentious and recommend really obscure indie bands that only 3 men and their dog have heard of. really, the problem is that the reviewer was expecting another oos. a good band is one that evolves its sound with each album, as gavin said. It’s like radiohead during the ammesiac/kid a days. people were expecting another ok computer, but got something completely the opposite of the alternative rock sound from the earlier albums. I feel the reviewer must consider the evolution of the sound. either that or he despises prog rock.
We’re perfectly aware that evolving sound is part of progression in a band with a long shelf-life like Muse and one of the main reasons we and many people love the Beatles, Radiohead etc so much. However you’ve also got to the bigger picture thinking when looking at an album and we’re just not so convinced Muse have taken the right path with this one. It’s not to say they won’t exucute a piece of electro-rock perfection on their next attempt, it’s just it didn’t happen this time round.
Oh, and as for prog rock, ‘Yes’ are my stand-out candidates for greatest band ever by a mile…
[...] the synthetic back-bone to the songs; nevertheless, Editors seem to have done what Muse tried with ‘The Resistance’ and ended up in much the same [...]