Rainard Jalen

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to say Muse are a bad band. I mean, evidently, they're not bad at all. But having come off hearing the Black Holes and Revelations album, what I CAN say is that there's nothing particularly remarkable about their music at all, at least in THIS example anyway. Nothing.

Bellamy's vocals are the most peculiarly exaggerated I've ever heard in all my life; most of the songs are not particularly gratifying or catchy; it's pretty old school at heart, really, riff sections often resembling Black Sabbath, and even Queen - speaking of whom, the voice double-tracking in some songs sounds curiously like them too; as for all the synth effects, then it also sounds fairly old school, 80s even, rather than modern or futuristic; the usage of the odd classical element here and there often seem out of place. To sum up, one can label all this "innovation" if they like; to me, it's just... oddness! The overall combination of ideas just don't merge together well enough or sound that good. It's more a retro record than anything else.

Even in spite of all the unconventionals, this is on the whole still a fairly pedestrian, formulaic, uninspiring, uninteresting pop record. Can anybody seriously admit to REALLY getting the dying urge to turn this on?

Now, I'm fully with the understanding that all major bands are sickly overrated by their fanboys... that's not the issue. What puzzles me, though, is what exactly is it is that these fanboys are FINDING in Muse that fills them with so much, to all intents and purposes, inexplicable awe? Is it just the geeky perception that because they do a few odd things, they're therefore rock revolutionaries?