September, 2009

Resistance album cover

Before I begin, I would like to say that I’m a big Muse fan. I have all their albums and have seen them live a few times.

That being said, Resistance is crap. Let me list the ways:

1. Uprising: The BBC have unveiled the new Dr. Who theme tune. Seems like they’ve chosen Call Me by Blondie
2. Resistance: Pretty generic college rock with some electronics
3. Undisclosed Desires: Someone’s been watching too much Smash Hits and VH1. New Wave with hip-hop beats? No thanks.
4. United States Of Eurasia: Otherwise known as Queen Tribute Act. And why stick on some Chopin on the end?
5. Guiding Light: Can’t think of anything interesting to say about this song. I suppose, Muse have never been at their best when writing slower songs.
6. Unnatural Selection: A crap cover version of one of their best songs, New Born
7. MK Ultra: Probably sounds ok live is about the nicest thing I can think of.
8. I Belong To You: What the fuck are Maroon 5 doing in my Muse album?
9. Exogenesis: Half decent but not the incredible epic it had been hyped to be.

This album is an overproduced mess. The past few albums have certainly shown that Muse do like epic and elaborate sounds, but they’ve also contained subtlety and nuance. The Resistance discards all of that and the end result is a bland mish-mosh of ideas that is completely toothless.

I used to think that Muse’s music and interviews were carried out with a knowing sense of the absurd, yet The Resistance and recent comments (Matt Bellamy seeks an audience with Peter Mandelson to fight piracy) makes me think that they actually believe everything they say and their own hype.