MUSE

THE 2ND LAW (Warner Brothers)

3/20

Muse’s relentless march from most revered live act in the country to pseudo-futuristic band of clowns continues apace. The wobbly swells of Madness serve as the big reveal that they’ve immersed themselves in the wrong kind of bass music. News of a collaboration with Nero simply confirmed the fact, and the track in question, Follow Me, is suitably horrendous. The apocalyptic rock-opera Survival is salvaged momentarily by the kind of slide-and-drop riff which might make fans of Torche pop a lughole its way, only to be subsequently overwritten by the sound of Matt Bellamy warbling like Sarah Brightman, donning a rocket pack and soaring upwards directly into his own backside.

There is clearly some grand collective statement present, but more often than not it’s thematically rooted in well-worn cliches and tenuous sloganeering. But oh my, does it all come together in the calamitous filmic closing suite. Unsustainable starts like a shit movie, and progresses quickly into an even shitter song, the worst kind of daytime Radio One ‘dubstep’ fare which caters to the absolute lowest common denominator and displays a band jumping on a dirty, dirty bandwagon without truly understanding who they’re going to be sitting next to and that there’s an idiot behind the wheel. They presumably think they’re embracing the future. They’re not. They’re embracing an extremely short term vision of the future, one that in five, let alone fifty years, will be looked back on as an ugly, momentary blot on the copy book of music, a sonic Fifty Shades of Grey that can not be forgotten soon enough.

The evolution of Muse’s sound into increasingly unsavoury realms – realms where wraparound shades and keytars are acceptable – was semi-expected in the wake of 2009’s The Resistance. The band’s growth from big, to huge, to fucking massive was equally inevitable. But they’re leaving pretty much all their previous fans behind in the process.

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Words: Geraint Davies