The Resistance by Muse, a review
The Resistance, Muse
This past Tuesday, Muse released their newest album, The Resistance. After their phenomenal outing with Black Holes and Revelations, I my expectations were very high. With songs like Supermassive Black Hole, Knights of Cydonia and Map of the Problematique, how could they top that?
Quote me: they topped it.
The Resistance is a pseudo-concept album using protest, love and space. Yes, you read that correctly: space. The album uses synths, screaming guitars and falsetto that hasn’t been heard in such a rockin’ atmosphere since Freddy Mercury was belting out Bohemian Rhapsody. In their liner notes, Muse leading man Matt Belamy references Tchaikovsky, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and “1980s cheesy stadium rock” (The Resistance). In the same note on the song Guiding Light, “There is a guitar solo with a deliberate screaming harmonic. These types of harmonics have been banned from rock music for at least 18 years, possibly longer” (The Resistance).
The album has eight singles, where the themes of public uprising against the government through violence, using love and sexuality as a form of resistance (a la 1984‘s Julia and Winston). It’s heavy in its concepts and vacillates smoothly between catchy tunes and beautiful classical-inspired piano solos. The song “The United States of Eurasia” features a portion of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Major, while while “I Belong to You (Mon Coeur S’Ouvre A Ta Voix)” features parts of Mon Coeur S’Ouvre A Ta Voix from the opera Samson and Delilah.
The final three songs are a three part symphony titled Exogenesis. It tells the story of humanity, having destroyed earth and in need of a new place to live, sending astronauts into space to fine somewhere else. The astronauts realize, in the third and final part, that unless humanity changes their ways this cycle will repeat itself. It is, quite simply, beautiful. The conclusion has such a hopeful sadness… It makes your heart clench.
There are few albums in my adult life that I have did the proverbial rewind and listen again thing with. The Crane Wife by The Decemberists and Amaterasu by David Fridlund are the only two before The Resistance. There is a great deal to it and I felt like I missed things the first few listens. There were things I became focused on each time: the eastern flavor to The United States of Eurasia, the love story of Resistance and Undisclosed Desires and the political tones of Unnatural Selection. You can at the same time casually listen to this album and pick apart every word.
Overall, I would highly recommend this album. I’m still listening to it, in full, over and over.
