Muse - Black Holes and Revelations review

The new Muse album leaked a few days ago so I'll do a real-time (i.e. as I listen to it) review. Unfortunately the leak is only in mono, but that means I'll get doubly the pleasure (heh...Doubly) when I buy the CD. Here goes...

1. TAKE A BOW - opens with ominous synths. Vocals come in, similarly ominous - very low-key opening. Getting more urgent, then the vocals expanding it "You'll burn in hell for your sins", whole thing gets really blippy and techno-ey, pretty fucking awesome vocal melody in this middle part. Strange effect applied on the vocals and then the whole fucking PLANET EXPLODES! It's like the synthy ripples from Apocalypse Please with more guitars being added, then BAM, the bass comes in. You can SEE the spaceships taking off. Then essentially a repeat of the melodies from the start but with a more rocky tone. "Pay for your crimes against the earth" - awesome. When it gets to the "burn in hell" climax, it's like the overture of a stage musical, just all coming together with awesome harmonies and everything, with that staggering final chord descending into feedback goodness. Great opening.

2. STARLIGHT - Very poppy start, almost Coldplay-esque piano riff and vaguely Time Is Running Out bassline. The lyrics are very sci-fi, with black holes, spaceships, star systems and so on getting a mention. Very pretty vocal melodies. "Let's conspire to ignite all the souls that would die just to feel alive". Middle 8 section kicks ass! Guitars and synthesized arpeggios coming in, very Bliss-esque. Dunno about the chorus, it's kind of a non-chorus. But now it's more rocky and just a rearrangement of the different parts of the song. So it's kind of boring until the guitar-filled climax, some nice "ooo"s in the background and a magnificent final vocal.

3. SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE - the second "black hole" song on the album, actually LESS poppy, I find, than Starlight - despite this being the first single. This is mainly because of its aggressive guitar riff and the fact that it's more of a guitar song. I like the sleazy vocals, and the "glaciers melting in the dead of night" bit is lovely. Just a very pretty dance song I guess. Unfortunately it's really repetitive - verse, chorus, verse, chorus, little solo bit, chorus. However, when the chorus comes in after the chorus it's (super)massive. There's just something sexual and stalkery about this song that I kind of dig. So far it's the most different to anything Muse have done before - but that will change...

4. MAP OF THE PROBLEMATIQUE - Opening with a trance-synth riff and a two-note piano accompaniment, it's very dancey. More so than Supermassive. But it's also darker and more evil-sounding. I love this song. It has this feeling of total desperation and of being at one's wits' end. Also nice how the song structure is built around one looping riff - even the chorus and everything. It just oozes pain. And how about the blips between the verse and chorus? Awesome. "Loneliness" comes in like a bunch of monks chanting, and is then taken over by a couple bars of drum craziness before the song resumes, crazier than before. I'll say it again - I love this song. So far the best on the album. It's like someone running away blindly, running so fucking hard that they can't see anything, all that's left is the feeling of adrenaline and the aforesaid desperation.

5. A SOLDIER'S POEM - the "nice" song. Starts like Blackout and basically remains like Blackout except with more variation in melody and with barbershop chorus instead of strings. "Do you think you deserve your freedom", "there's no justice in the world and there never was" - the most overtly political song on the album, maybe, especially with the title taken under consideration. A brief interlude before the massiveness that is...

6. INVINCIBLE - starting with a mess of instruments eventually coalescing into a gentle military march (if there is such a thing). Kind of cliche'd lyrics, but uplifting - the most uplifting Muse song to date, really, of the kind that you might see as the theme song to the World Cup or something, with team members hugging. It gets bigger until it reaches "Together we're invincible". The chorus is beautiful, just fucking gorgeous. Tear-inducing. A slidey guitar solo comes in before it goes all semi-dance, I don't know how to describe it. Vocals get harder and the chorus has added power. Clicky drums. Then an evil bassline comes in and turns the whole thing upside-down, messing around with a brilliant twiddly guitar solo before giving out another rendition of the chorus, featuring some traditional Bellamy vowel-mangling with possibly the most powerful 20 seconds of vocals on any Muse song. Reminds me of live performances, vocally anyway. It's the kind of massive ending that Muse excel at.

7. ASSASSIN - opens with the fucking Knight Rider theme, before going metal and stuff. This was heard live a couple years ago, and it's gotten faster and crazier here. The drumming in particular is incredible. For me it's one of the weaker tracks on the album, despite its good chorus and skull-crushing main guitar riff. It also features the phrase "destroy demonocracy", which kind of rules, but it just doesn't have anything to really catch my attention except the wildness of it. It's probably the meanest (not heaviest) Muse song except for maybe Execution Commentary. The multitracked vocals at the end give it a nice epic quality but in general it's kind of suXX0r for me. Luckily it's followed up by another track previously played live:

8. EXO POLITICS - This is the Franz-style sound they were talking about. Lyrically it's the strongest song on the album, with talk of government conspiracies, Zeta Reticulans, alien invasion, mind control and satellite-based weaponry. I fucking love it. And it's got the catchiest chorus of all the songs here. The most danceable song on the album? maybe. The chorus is just fucking HUGE. Nice guitar solo halfway through. I can see this being a great live song now that it's been worked out. Bellamy's singing is great, giving it the insane obsessiveness inherent in the lyrics. it's Science Fiction, boys, and it's here to stay. And do I hear a fucking THEREMIN in the background before chorus #1? Yes, I think I do, and that gives it a 5/5 rating instantly.

9. CITY OF DELUSION - the album starts coming into its own here (with basically the last three tracks). Acoustic guitar opening building to a great Mexican-influenced bassline, the strings come in with a Turkish-sounding bit. Chorus is huge, with great explosions of guitar. The strings work nicely here. Now they're a bit Arabic sounding maybe? Towards halfway we get a really fucking cool effected bass and more Franzey stuff going on before the strings come back in and the chorus does also. The strings go crazy and unleash the TRUMPET SOLO! This is a song that I can see they could have problems playing live, there are lots of layers to it. One final rendition of the chorus and the song is over. Maybe it's a bit too long, but it finishes well with twiddly strings, so it kind of works.

10. HOODOO - A standout. Opens with mariachi guitar and foot-stomping, very nicely done. Then a section reminiscent of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang". Beautiful vocals and guitar. The bass comes in and it gets soulful (not Isaac Hayes though), just very sad, the strings coming in again and reaching a head, where we get Oriental style piano building to very Bellamy-esque theatrical piano and guitar. A logical progression and a very good one. It's epic. Reminds me of war-film scores when cities get destroyed. Then it goes back to Nancy for a nice low-key finish.

11. KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA - the much-celebrated sci-fi western rock monster. It starts with, I shit you not, horses, lasers and bombs (sound effects!). A siren heralds the coming of Ennio Morricone choir and guitar. The vocals get more intense as the drumming combines with the rumbling of horses' hooves and then the guitar slides down to unleash the main rhythm. A guitar plays the main melody, then vocals do it. Very long and majestic opening, this. Trumpets come in and provide a counterpoint to the vocal "oo"ing and "aah"ing. This is where it goes a bit Doctor Who, with the spacey melody and galloping bass. Then the actual sung lyrics come in. Nothing *really* that special except the bits about god falling asleep at the job and stuff. Then the Morricone stuff comes back in and even more powerfully than before. I watched a Leone film the other day and this brings back happy memories from it. Then it goes all synthy with rampaging guitar, giving way to the most ear-splitting harmonies this side of Bohemian Rhapsody, with arpeggiated synths in the background. This chorus repeats again with ever-building guitars and drums, then we're bitch-slapped with the most rockin' riff on the whole album. BANG! Fuck yeah! This will close all Muse sets on their current tour, I guarantee it. The chorus comes in again, maybe even bigger this time. It's apocalyptic and it's fantastic. A guitar solo then more riffage, then it's all over.

So that's BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS. I'd rate it above Absolution and Showbiz, but probably not over Origin of Symmetry. It has a couple of weak songs (Starlight, Supermassive and Assassin IMO) and it only really becomes an album in the last 3 songs. I'd like to see Muse do an album solely exploring that Mexican angle, because it works fucking well here. The dancey stuff works well too (in Take A Bow and Map of the Problematique) and there are a couple of nice rock songs, slow builders, you know. It's a sci-fi album and I dig that. Yeah.

My favourite tracks: Map of the Problematique, Exo Politics, Hoodoo, Invincible, Knights of Cydonia.