After recently watching one of the best live performances I've ever seen at Reading Festival this bank holiday weekend, I felt it completely necessary to review what is, in my opinion, Muse's best album to date; Origin Of Symmetry.
After the general success of their debut Showbiz, this second album raised them into the high-society of headlining rock music acts. After this weekend's show, it's easy to see why Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard are thought of so highly.
Opener New Born, is simply breath-taking. The piano introduction builds the song up perfectly, with Bellamy's eerie vocals - Thom Yorke-esque at times - acting as a perfect compliment. Then it all happens. The piano's die down and it comes the electric guitars, with a riff full of energy, rhythm and excitment. From then on the verses keep the tempo up to a fast pace before the crash-bang-wallop of the chorus with Bellamy's cries of "Destroy the spineless, show me it's real. Wasting their last chance to come away." It doesn't matter how often I listen to this song, I cannot get tired of it. And at six minutes longly, it's purely epic.
The follow-up to that is Bliss, and don't think it drops the standard. A quiet intro, that breaks into distorted guitars and drumbeats quicker than New Born. The choruses here show perfectly the band's penchant for the melodic vocals of Bellamy over quick rhythms which fit perfectly.
Space Dementia, like New Born at six minutes in length and with a piano introduction, shows the band's liking as well for musical effects. Guitar and vocal effects such as reverb are used in amounts here to produce another beautiful piece of music.
Now, I notice numerous music reviews on here, many of mine included to be honest, review song after song, which I find often at times to be labourious to read, so I felt I ought to avoid going down this route, but it's still certainly worth here mention a couple of other cracking, stand-out songs.
A track many people will be familiar with is Plug-In Baby. It's exciting, pacey guitar intro riff is synonymous with Muse. All you need to know about it is the energy of it, proven especially when performed live, is immense. Never letting down, yet never tiring the listener out by being over the top with repetitive bass drum banging and guitar crunching, like many "heavy" rock bands tend to do.
A good track to mention is the band's cover of Feeling Good. Bellamy's competence on the piano, as well as the guitar, are showcased here. To cover such a song in a "Muse" way may confuse people, but for those originally unaware that is was a cover, they'd struggle to realise it as the band make it sound like the perfect Muse track.
The overall competence of the band to consistently produce big tracks on this the album is something that many bands can only dream of. Instead of having just one or two "stand-out" tracks, such as New Born and Plug-in Baby - which are awesome, they have many other ones such Bliss, Hyper Music, Citizen Erased and Feeling Good. If anything, only the track Screenager can personally be said to be lost on the album due to it's lack of strength. But maybe that's just because it's a 'quiet' track compared to others.
Oh...and according to Amazon it's priced at £5.97 - in my mind that's an absolute steal...so get it!!
Do yourself a favour, if you like rock music with distorted guitars, a unique sound, epic melodies and energetic guitar riffs, then Muse is for you. Or to put it even more simply, if you like good music, Muse is for you.
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I've only begun to listen to them and agree this is a good album......although haven't heard the others so nothing to compare it to! x
Micro-Ice 02.09.2006 15:11
great review, Not there biggest fan, but good any way. Mikey : )
kepler3001 02.09.2006 00:58
You're right about Screenager - It just doesn't seem to fit in with the mood of the album for me, and is a blemish on an otherwise astoundingly good album. Nice review.
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