ahhh...okay. here it goes.
now to be completely and utterly honest, this new album is not one of my favourites. this album, with all its hype and press that it's getting seems to me just excess (overrated perhaps?).
i love Muse. i really do. but...with this album i was somewhat expecting something more.
and, i was hoping for something that was more like their second or third album.
that being said though, coming off of their fourth album (Black Holes and Revelations) it comes as no surprise that their sound is almost in the same vein: stadium rock-pop, with a tinge of space-age stuff.
yes, this album has much adhered to the likes of "Knights Of Cydonia" or "Supermassive Black Hole" - two of their biggest songs on Black Holes... - and so, it has also (I PERSONALLY BELIEVE) become muchmuchmuch more pop-oriented.
the way i see it: "Supermassive Black Hole" really only had re-surged and skyrocketed into charts because of (dundunduhn) Twilight. and the followers and obsessors of that film (myself not included) are teens and pre-teens - a large and important fact to this whole argument here.
yay, good for Muse that they have one of their songs featured in one of the biggest grossing romance- films of the past like...5 years. good on them.
their exposure though to the likes of kids 10 years or younger and for these young guns to keep listening to their music...well, there is really only one thing that Muse would have to do. and that would be to make some more pop-rock music - more...consumer-friendly? commercial? i s'pose.
(take a listen to "Guiding Light", "Undisclosed Desires",
this is all just speculation. and my own personal opinion. (which hardly seems to matter, given the fact that The Resistance has topped the charts everywhere.)
now, what i would've liked was for Muse to go back to making some of their great stadium rock songs, like on Absolution (i have in mind "Stockholm Syndrome")
some of the songs do, in fact, hearken back to those sounds ("Unnatural Selection").
i do remember reading this one review, that had said "United States of Eurasia" was the Queen song that Queen never wrote. agreeably, it is. you can't not head-bang to this, or sing-along to "Eura-SIA. SIA. SIA."
and this album does have one of the most amazing rock 'symphonies' i have every heard: the last three songs, each titled "Exogenesis," are the highlight of the album for me. Each Part certainly features some of the best piano parts, especially Part 3, which also ends with a pleading Bellamy singing "Let's start over again..." (Oh, should mention here too that the ending of "United States of Eurasia" features the bonus "Collateral Damage" - which is basically Chopin's famous and beautifully written "Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2")
to wrap up my ramblin'...it's a pretty decent album. one that only they could've made. and i'm not saying that i didn't like it...it'll just have to grow on me.
