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Muse's The Resistance reviewed
MusicRadar's track-by-track guide
Joe Bosso, Thu 27 Aug 2009, 12:32 pm UTC
On The Resistance, Muse's fifth album, the band go big. A shocker, right? Not really. Since they first appeared as vague Radioheaders with 1999's Showbiz, it was evident that grand schemes and notions of musical grandeur danced in the band's collective head.
Now those dreams are made manifest: Muse have grown up, grown into their ambitions, and they create the sort of bombast that makes 'bombast' a much less ugly word.
Early into the recording, maverick guitarist and musical renegade Matthew Bellamy hinted that The Resistance would be "orchestral" and "classical," sending shivers down many a spine. Would Muse lapse into a cringe-inducing, ego-inflated ELP/Rick Wakeman prog odyssey?
The good news is, not hardly. Sure, Muse want to impress us, but more than that, and more significantly, they want us to feel. And because that impulse is so genuine - driven most urgently by frontman Bellamy, who writes the bulk of the material - we do feel. In this day and age, that's saying something.
Bellamy has all of his influences lined up like ducks in a row here. There's Berlioz and Lizst, and a whiff of Rachmaninoff for good measure. Chopin he virtually name-checks, having included a passage from Nocturne In E-Flat Major in the unabashed Queen tribute United States Of Eurasia. The same goes for opera - I Belong To You features parts from Samson And Delilah.
But we also detect some Debussy and Gershwin (intentional?), along with an overall framework that recalls the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
OK, you're scared, right? Don't be. On first listen, The Resistance is a masterwork that offers plenty of aural thrills. Bellamy's Manson guitars are locked on 'stun' throughout, although we do have a quibble, and it's a major one: He's a bit of a tease.
Every time Bellamy launches into a mind-melting or soul-expanding solo, he pulls back, as if to say, "That's enough." This can be irritating since too much of a good thing is a great thing, and not enough of a good thing is a cheat.
That's the problem when you want to cram so much music into each song - something's gotta give. Bellamy's a modern-day rock god shred king, right up there with the best of them. On The Resistance, when he should let us bathe and luxuriate in his six-string triumphs, he gives us brief, refreshing showers.
