Muse
The Resistance
Warner Brothers
By Eileen Tilson
The odds are fairly good that Matt Bellamy probably
is not sleeping very well. Plagued with problems, real or imaginary, Bellamy’s
world is filled with back alley government conspiracies and apocalyptic
endings, which he so descriptively portrays in his Muse’s fifth studio album,
The Resistance. Muse is declaring war and rallying up their cult-like
fans to follow them into battle, knighting Matt Bellamy as the immortal crusader
out to warn the public of impending doom.
Although songs like their industrious single
“Uprising” continue to prove this introspective trio can still create a larger
than life sound, the lyrics are pompous in nature, with Bellamy prepping himself
for stadium sing-alongs: “They will not destroy us/We will be victorious.” Past
Muse albums were infused with psychosexual love ballads, such as “Plug in Baby,”
that bordered on the musical insanity line that most bands would not attempt to
cross. On Resistance though, Muse is not breaking any molds, and instead
of writing thought provoking songs, the album is large in sound, in order to
overshadow the shallow lyrics. The band blatantly borrows from progressive
musicians like Radiohead, Depeche Mode and Queen without adding to the musical
creativity and thoughtful prose.
There is no doubt Muse are musically talented; the
album is perfectly strung together, and the orchestrated sound is over the top,
bombarding eardrums with classical piano, bilingual lyrics, concert hall
percussion, and coronet solos. They are also exquisitely capable of moving
between prog rock choruses and excerpts from Chopin's "Nocturne in E Flat Major"
within the same song, with amps, of course, on the verge of explosion. The
album closes with Sir Bellamy’s own three-part symphony dubbed “Exogenesis,”
posing the unanswerable questions, “Why are we/Who are we?” Although this
would be the perfect soundtrack for the end of the world, at the end of the day
Resistance makes for better video-game background music than an artistic
statement.
