These days when I am reviewing albums, I often search the web to see what others are saying before I commit words to the page. I never change my opinion on the music, but sometimes I find some facts that may have been missing from the press release (if indeed there was one). So before starting on this one I of course went straight to www.progarchives.com and started to read the first review by AtomicCrimsonRush, where he stated that Bellamy’s vocals on this Muse album is just incredible, especially the way he moves to falsetto. “That’s exactly what I thought” I said to myself. Then he commented that opening song “Supremacy” would have worked very well with the new James Bond movie. Well that answered one question for me, as I had again thought the same and was going to check to see if it did indeed make an appearance. Then he goes on to say that they come across as Queen and at that point I decided to stop reading any further so that I could actually write my review without feeling that I had copied someone else’s in totality!!
Bellamy is at his absolute best here, of that there is no doubt, and the more I have played the album the more convinced I have become that Muse in 2012 are what Queen would sound like if they had started in the Nineties instead of the end of the Sixties. I haven’t actually heard any of their albums since ‘Absolution’, which incredibly is 9 years ago now, so the change in their style over time is probably more obvious to me than those who have followed their career more closely. Although they do retain their harder roots, they are obviously a much more polished and refined band than they used to be and they aren’t afraid to play whatever style they want, often switching inside the same song.
This is an album that screams ‘class’ from the highest rooftops, and all I can say is that the local boys have done good. There aren’t exactly a plethora of bands from Devon, although Kirk Brandon attended the same school as me, and Wishbone Ash have always been seen as the local heroes (although they actually came together in London and only two of the four were from Torquay), but these Teignmouth lads have done the old county proud. There may not be as many crunching guitars as there used to be, although there is a nifty powerful digression in “Survival” (which is highly influenced by Brian May). You won’t have read it here first, but this album is a solid four stars in anybody’s book.
