The Resistance

Ari Hamilton
Entertainment Editor

Very few bands have been able to simultaneously explore the edges of music while still managing to expand their audience. Muse, a British alternative rock band who formed in 1994, have managed to achieve that trend to tremendous success. With their latest album, The Resistance, Muse has once again managed to set new boundaries to their already diverse range of sounds.

In their first album, Showbiz, Muse maintained an edgy, new-progressive tone, creating a unique sound based upon superb instrumentals and a the piercing falsetto singing of lead guitarist and singer, Matthew Bellamy. With each following album, Muse began experimenting, reconciling classically inspired piano solos with pop-rock simplicity into some of the most striking rock of the decade.

From the first track, Uprising, it is quite clear that this album is going to be different from any of Muse’s previous endeavors. In spite of maintaining the clear instrumental dominance of past albums, as seen in the piano lines of tracks such as The United States of Eurasia and I Belong to You, the pop influences which Muse has only dabbled with in the past are clearly full blown.

For fans whom have followed Muse’s development from the beginning, this is not only surprising but even admittedly disappointing the first listen through the album. Gone are the delicate synth intros from throughout the bands second album Origin of Symmetry. Gone is the brilliant combinations of intensity and mellow which alternated the tracks throughout their third album, Absolution.

Yet as extinct as these aspects of Muse’s evolution may seem at first, the band’s extraordinary versatility and skill in both in composition and performance are in fact very much alive and breathing. The change is not in the complexity or originality of their music, but in the tone and flavor. Muse has taken the catchy, addictive, feel of two of their most well-known tracks, Time is Running out from Absolution, and Starlight from Black Holes and Revolutions, and filled an entire album with a similar style. In Resistance, pop-rock has become the dominant sound and alternative rock has become the guerilla tone.

However, there is a blatant defiance to the pop trend which Muse has taken for their latest opus in the final three tracks, which compromise the rock symphony titled Exogenesis. For fans who awaited a return to Muse’s roots, these three tracks are that revival in full force, and then some. Reminiscent of Origin of Symmetry, Exogenesis sees Matt return to his original falsetto singing style, a focus on science fiction-based lyrics, and displays a musical complexity which was seemingly lacking from the rest of the album. The only complaint to be held with Exogenesis is that it wasn’t long enough to be an album of its own.

The Resistance, despite a jarring divergence from their traditional style, is more than satisfactory for the style which Muse has decided to move their sound towards. Displaying both elements of the Muse which fans have come to both expect and entirely original ideas, The Resistance can raise its revolutionary banner in victory over the ears and imaginations of fans both old and new.