MUSE – Black Holes And Revelations (Warners)
With this album Muse have delivered the record that they always threatened to make – a full-blown prog effort, complete with operatic vocals, enigmatic six minute epics, and lashings of over the top keyboards and guitar. ‘Take A Bow’ opens as they mean to go on, with pulsating keys and crashing guitars, building up to a magnificent crescendo. ‘Starlight’ was an excellent single choice, being commercial enough to attack the charts but still intricate enough so as not to alienate their hardcore fans. I didn’t like ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ when I first heard it live on Jonathan Ross, but the album version sounds much more powerful, and the falsetto vocal doesn’t grate as much as I feared. ‘Map Of The Problematique’ has an almost dance music vibe to it, while ‘Invincible’ is an album highlight. ‘City Of Delusion’ is classic Muse, but with the addition of a mariachi trumpet, and ‘Hoodoo’ is one of their effortless ballads. They are all just leading up, though, to the epic and bombastic ‘Knights Of Cydonia’. This is the song that Muse fans will be talking about for years to come - is it the band’s masterpiece or an overblown piece of mock-prog rock? Well, if you want my two-penneth, the galloping drums don’t quite give the right feel, but lyrically they are on the right track, and the acapella middle section building up to the riffing guitars works very well, and so on the whole it is a success. I am still in two minds about whether I agree with the consensus that this is the band’s best album, as I still rate ‘Origins Of Symmetry’, but it is certainly no disappointment.