The British rock band Muse has always had a flair for the over-the-top, grandiose and dramatic. Considering it’s one of the few successful modern-rock bands that fit into the genre of progressive rock, this has worked in the group’s favor.
The three-piece has steadily gained steam, first garnering a huge following in their native England (they were the first group to sell out the newly remodeled Wembley Stadium in London) and has recently gained increasing popularity in the United States.
The 2006 album Black Holes and Revelations brought Muse to a new level of popularity, gaining attention with musically smart, but heavy songs like the ballad “Starlight” and six minute spaghetti western space song, “Knights of Cydonia.”
Also, “Supermassive Black Hole” was featured prominently on the soundtrack of the 2008 teen-vampire-love drama, “Twilight.”
With The Resistance, Muse continues its formula of extravagant sprawling epics and heavy down-beat rockers, playing up the group’s flair for the dramatic to a level fitting of the label progressive rock.
Muse’s knack for the epic is most obvious on the three-part album-ender, pretentiously called “Exogenesis: Symphony” which divides into the segments “Overture, Cross-Pollination, Redemption.” One of the highlights of the album, these tracks feature an entire string section to back up the band and accompany singer/guitarist Matthew Bellamy’s howling voice and piano passages which build up to fully distorted rock crescendos.
The album begins with promise, opening with “Uprising” and “The Resistance.”
A galloping mid-tempo song, Bellamy sings in “Uprising,” “They will not destroy us, we will be victorious,” but what’s being resisted in the album? Has Muse, a critical darling, been put down by the music industry? Is the group resisting its fans? Its nay-sayers? The less obvious option is The Resistance is Muse’s dabbling into the nebulous region of concept-rock by resisting the beaten path of the music industry. (Ironically, progressive rock is a very beaten path, just ask Rush, Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer.)
Resistance, after all, isn’t an uncommon theme in rock; it was used heavily in the 1983 Styx concept album, Kilroy Was Here. Luckily, there are no “Mr. Robato”‘s on The Resistance.
Muse plays its hand most deftly with the beautiful and sometimes unsettling “United States of Eurasia,” a song that shows obvious send ups to Queen with spot falsettos of “There can be only one!” and “Eurasia!” throughout the song. This is built up to with subtle and sometimes sublime piano passages as played by Bellamy and the song is bridged with a symphonic middle eastern string passage.
With The Resistance, Muse members show they are top-quality musicians, but this album is no masterpiece. Too many tracks begin to sound the same, namely the three middle tracks, “Guiding Light,” the unbelievably almost seven-minute-long “Unnatural Selection” and “MK Ultra” which all sound too similar to remain interesting.
This repetition is compounded by the sometimes over-reliance on Bellamy’s voice. While a talented singer, many of the songs run together as Bellamy’s voice stretches from long, loud choruses to almost howling over the band’s crunching guitars. In the first two songs, this makes for a great combination when put over the band’s heavy rocking rhythm section, but gets old fast.
Extremely talented bassist Christopher Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard can rock with the best of them, but the band shows off with its versatility. The band takes a completely different musical approach on “Undisclosed Desires” and especially “I Belong to You.” In the latter, a piano-driven, upbeat love song demonstrates a complete shift from the group’s customary guitar heavy rock.
Muse’s talent can’t be ignored on The Resistance, but the band’s eagerness to rock gets too far ahead of itself at times and becomes a chore to listen to. Although the band shows it can play hard, The Resistance also demonstrates the group’s understanding of the understatement, sometimes even in the middle of an epic.
Although the dead weight in the album prevents it from becoming a classic, its triumphs show Muse will continue to be a successful musical force and also show popular progressive rock is still alive.