Fennekin 7

TL;DR version: Muse is back to sounding like Muse but not with their fullest potential. Satisfying album for Muse fans, won't win back any TL;DR version: Muse is back to sounding like Muse but not with their fullest potential. Satisfying album for Muse fans, won't win back any Symmetry fanboys. Muse is moving in a forward direction and I'm looking forward to their next release.



Muse takes a step back from the previous two albums and goes back to their roots a little. I say "a little" because the orchestral and electronic elements that characterize 'The Resistance' and 'The 2nd Law' respectively are still present, but overall the band has stopped making experimental crap. That said, like The 2nd Law, the album's sound is rather scattered, shifting from pop to hard rock to stadium rock, the list goes on. It's not THAT big of a deal in hindsight, and at least the album is, again, identifiable as a Muse record. Each song seems to attribute to an older song so there's something for everyone, but that essentially means that only Muse fans will really enjoy this album and it probably won't draw in many newer fans, and older "fans" who only like pre-BH&R Muse will probably dislike it besides a couple tracks. Individually, most songs are /okay/. They hold their own alright, but the only GREAT tracks are 'Reapers' and 'The Handler', the former of which stands out the most due to its EPIC outro; both songs also have awesome progression and great solos. Other songs I'll explicitly mention are 'The Globalist', which has its moments but feels a little underwhelming for a 10-minute track, 'Drones' for being... weird; not sure if it would've been better as an interlude or if it's just out of place entirely (something tells me Matt REALLY wanted to do an a capella), 'Defector' for having rather questionable songwriting, at least in the verses, and 'Revolt' for being too cheesy. ...I guess I just don't like the second half that much. First half has some good stuff, though.



The last thing that I'll bring up are the lyrics. Lyrics are more like an extra credit assignment; it's nice to read and hear good lyrics, but they're not the focus because the actual music is more important (at least for rock), and can easily be overlooked. But the lyrics on this album are bad. Matt has never been an outstanding lyricist, but now he's trying to write something "important" and it's not pretty. It's a concept album with a political edge, and probably for the sake of the album's progression, some songs are reduced to absolute slop for lyrics, screaming the message at you until you can't ignore it (which is actually literal in the case of 'Psycho'). I can't say the actual plotline is outstanding either, but it's not bad at least. I actually like how it takes a turning point at the end, but it's nothing to take too seriously in the end. ...Oh, and I guess I can be a dick and complain about the printing of the album. **** spacing, man, why are the lyrics hard to read when you're encouraged to read them in the first place?



I think that's all I wanted to say, though. Sorry if this is too long. … Expand