Imagine a song that starts strong with pounding drums and bass, lilting lyrics and complex chordal melodies. Now imagine that three minutes in, the song doesn't just camp out around a safe hook and poppy chorus, but instead escalates to newer and further heights of thunderous arena rock, catapulting the listener into mind-numbing vistas of sound.
Congratulations — you've just survived another sonic attack by English rockers Muse. Problem is, if you're a fan, what you just experienced is nothing new.
The band's complex "Black Holes and Revelations" picks up where 2004's "Absolution" left off, feeling more like a second half than an original composition.
Front man Matt Bellamy's layered vocals cast a syrupy-sweet spell on the listener as the music builds on itself in endless loops of sound, with the drums slowly building toward explosion.
Equal parts brainy progressive rock and over-the-top arena rock, Muse is very much a part of the post-Radiohead revolution, with keyboard composition reminiscent of classic-rockers Traffic.
But the transitions can be jarring, like when the album switches gears into the campy dance track "Supermassive Black Hole," with Bellamy singing in a falsetto befitting The Darkness' Justin Hawkins and backup vocals by the Autobots' Optimus Prime. It's equal parts Franz Ferdinand and Parliament Funkadelic, but all Muse.
Let me take just a moment to comment on the bass playing on this album. Like all the Muse I am familiar with, which sadly only includes the aforementioned "Absolution," the bass on "Black Holes and Revelations" drives like an American tourist on the autobahn, relentlessly dangerous and unrestrained. This is an album full of massive attacking bass lines — not the kind you can bump and grind to, but rather the ones that tear a hole in your chest when you see the band live.
Even on a song that begins as sedately as "Invincible," the bass takes control in the second half in a Timmy C-like fashion. And while I'm throwing around Rage Against The Machine references, in the same vein, the intro to "Assassin" has all the punch of a System of a Down chart topper. That is before the layered vocals come in again — back to the Franz Ferdinand. In another case, the bass completely owns "City of Delusion."
The drawback to an album as well-crafted as "Black Holes and Revelations" is that while continuing to rock as they always have, Muse fails to break any new ground.
Sure they have added to their soundscapes with some new textures (check out the flamenco guitar intro on "Hoodoo"), but essentially all the elements we are familiar with are there.
Even the album's closer, the overly cinematic "Knights of Cydonia," which sounds like it was concocted out of a Dan Brown conspiracy, still keeps true to the band's sense of dynamic composition.
Like all Muse songs, it starts small and then builds and builds until you think your head is going to explode.
Listening, you think this can't possibly get more intense, but then miraculously it does just that, once again relying on huge bass rifts and thunderous drums to take the song to levels of rock heretofore unexplored by man. Still, in the end, the vocals keep their poised precision, which holds the listeners back from blasting out of their earthly constraints before the song ends.
So if you're hoping to hear something new from Muse, you won't find it on this album. But, if, like me, you think Muse's sonic textures are the aural equivalent to a 10-course Thanksgiving feast, then you'll agree with me when I say: Give me more of the same.
