Muse - The Resistance
If 'Absolution' was the soundtrack to the Apocalypse, then 'The Resistance' is their bid to soundtrack the Revolution.
Even if you haven't indulged in an extended skim-read of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four - and it's fair to assume that some people haven't - its influence is embedded in the popular culture to the extent that the import of terms such as 'Big Brother' and 'the Thought Police' are easily recognised and understood by the masses. Arguably the ultimate dystopic novel, it tells of a grim, nightmare world in which the earth is divided into three warring supercontinents, where the past is constantly being rewritten as a means of retrospective propaganda, and ideals such as love, happiness, and freedom are treasonable offences punishable by death, at the hands of a shadowy, terrifying government. Pretty weighty stuff. It's on this rather grand and imposing thematic framework that Muse have built their fifth studio album, for Muse are nothing if not grand and imposing. If 'Absolution' was the soundtrack to the Apocalypse, then 'The Resistance' is their bid to soundtrack the Revolution.
By now everyone's familiar with the opener 'Uprising', having been assaulting the airwaves for the last few weeks. A foot-stomping, glam-rock romp, a clarion call to rebellion, and a good choice for the lead single; insurrection has never sounded so sexy. Title track 'Resistance' at first sounds deceptively dreary, like a diluted 'Map Of The Problematique' with all the fight taken out of it, but that's before it breaks into a jaunty bridge of lively piano, a funky beat and will have you singing "it could be wrong, could be wrong, but it shouldn't be right" for days, before segueing into a victorious and satisfyingly guitar-based chorus.
Delicate, plucked, pizzicato synth and gentle thumps that give the impression of soft rainfall form the distinguishing features of 'Undisclosed Desires', a seductive avowal of deepest love that builds to understated brilliance in the chorus as Matt Bellamy sings from the lower end of his register: "I want to reconcile the violence in your heart / I want to recognise your beauty's not just a mask". Not normally where his vocal strength lies, but on this occasion with the multi-layered vocal arrangement and percussion suddenly turning brittle, it becomes wonderfully atmospheric, and is perfection. The best track by a country mile.
'United States Of Eurasia [+ Collateral Damage]' isn't anything radically new – or to be more accurate, it's everything Muse have done before, soldered together and thrown into an industrial-sized blender, before being sculpted into something truly awe-inspiring and magnificent. Certainly bigger and more audacious than anything they've previously done, but broken down into its component parts, it's all kind of familiar: there's aspects of the futuristic space-rock sound they developed on 'Origin Of Symmetry', the 'portents of doom' atmosphere that has been sourced directly from 'Apocalypse Please', and the sense of grandeur and bombast that links it intimately to 'Knights Of Cydonia'. Yet it's more than just a sum of its component influences. There's the unignorable multifaceted Queen-like vocals that are a direct homage to 'Bohemian Rhapsody', and the amorous flourishes of strings that hint at a bygone era's romantic 'Arabian Nights' vision of desert sands and scimitars, combined with Bellamy's prowess on the piano keys, that twinkles like stars in a clear night sky. And not forgetting the rhythm section, the sheer power and pace of which is similar to Audioslave's 'Cochise', and helps transform the song into a daunting force to be reckoned with, inspiring admiration rather than affection. Another nod at Orwell's magnum opus, in which Eurasia refers to one of the three superpowers, comprised of the Soviet Union and continental Europe, it asserts in an ironic way that we should pool our land resources to equal the might of America, and become our own 'United States'.
'Guiding Light' is the first awkward moment that's encountered. Like 'Invincible', coming over all 80s and masquerading as a much showier 'Vienna'/ by Ultravox. You'll either think it’s brilliant or mawkish. Like ‘Resistance’, 'Unnatural Selection' plays the game of the deceptive intro, with Bellamy intoning like a church vicar on top of a funereal church organ, and then rapidly transforms into the heaviest song on the album, with frenetic riffage and a mildly distorted effect on the vocals, recalling in some measure the Muse of old. A sleepy middle section serves as the respite before it re-launches the attack and ends with a kind of homage to the guitar riffs of big-haired 80s bands, complete with palm muting aplenty.
'MK Ultra' heralds its arrival with a guitar intro that's half-piercing, half-electro and continues harping on the whole the-government's-out-to-get-us theme that's a given by now. Deliberate and careful, with moments of bass-heavy riffing, it's difficult to pin down and is probably the most fluid of the tracks. 'I Belong To You (+Mon Coeur S'Ouvre A Ta Voix)' is a total change of pace, not to mention sound. A jazzy, little number, it conjures up an image of the boys playing in some backstreet dive that caters to serious musos, all dressed in black and ready to get down. There's a mournful and majestic classical interlude slotted into the middle, which is sung a la française, before slipping back to the main melody, with a brief clarinet solo.
'Overture', the first part of the ambitious three-pronged symphony, enters with tremulous, spiralling strings, and is slowly joined by subtle but booming bass, further accentuated by the inclusion of cello vibrato, before Bellamy unleashes his haunting, unintelligible falsetto and just a touch of growling prog-rock guitar. It's beautiful and chilling. Part deux, 'Cross Pollination' starts with a rapidly ascending then descending piano line and is complemented by lush atmospherics in the background, but is more rock-opera than purely operatic - in a similar vein to 'Space Dementia', overcome with panic as Armageddon approaches.
'Redemption', the final instalment of the symphony and album closer, is drained of the malign intent of 'Overture' and paranoia of 'Cross Pollination', allowing itself to drift away on a melancholy, twinkling piano melody and a yearning string section, expressing the desire to "let us start over again" and is an aural manifestation of its title, forgiveness.
When a band like Muse, who've been around for a decade, release something new, the question is not whether they can live up to the success of their glory days (general consensus as well as personal opinion indicates that was the 'Absolution' era), but whether they're still relevant. Forget about them living up to their past, that's a losing battle that’ll leave you disillusioned. The band have said several times over the years that it would be easy to stick to the standard pop-rock formula that made 'Plug In Baby' such a hit, but then they wouldn't be pushing themselves or doing anything different. And 'different' is the key word here. 'The Resistance' may not be better than their previous work, or even as good, but it certainly is different. What's surprising is that it's just as much about love as it is about civil disobedience, literally stated when Bellamy yells triumphantly "love is our resistance! There are no obvious future singles, which is its main weakness in comparison to its predecessors. This record's strength lies in the songs not being separated from the larger fabric they're part of – on the album, each track flows well from one to another, but as individual songs they make less sense. So, are Muse still relevant? The answer is a defiant 'yes'.
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