Fresh off the heels of The Resistance, which saw Muse reach new heights in popularity, comes The 2nd Law. Whereas the album before was more of a space-rock opera, Muse decided to break free of that mold for their 6th album. Although better than it's predecessor, The 2nd Law is an example of how trying to mix too many different flavors together can be a bad idea.
Things certainly start out promising enough. Opening track "Supremacy" almost sounds like it could have been on Absolution. Despite the vague similarities to classic Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir" (which lets be honest, isn't a bad thing at all), the first song does a great job of capturing the attention of the listener with it's horselike rhythmic drumming and extremely epic chorus, which has Bellamy screaming at the top of his lungs. It's a great start to the album, I just wish there was more like it. The closest thing would be "Liquid State", featuring vocals and a heavy riff from bassist Chris Wolfenstein. Drummer Dom Howard surely has a great time playing this one live, too. Also, there's the surprisingly good "Animals", which sounds like the best song that Minus The Bear never wrote. The ending is especially heaving and roaring, complete a great solo and a piercing, escalating intensity. One thing that I picked up on was the lyric "Kill yourself/come on/and do us all a favor," which reeks of bad taste in a society where everything is interpreted literally. On the songs previously mentioned, Muse played it somewhat carefully by sticking to what they do best.
When they venture into other genres however, the cookie starts to crumble. Lead single "Madness" sees the band going in an electronic direction with little success. Despite the electronics, it manages to sound just like Queen, but not in a good way, only a derivative one. As I'm sure you have heard by now, yes, Muse did a dub-step song. No, "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" isn't particularly interesting or riveting considering what else is available in the genre, but it is unique in the sense that it was recorded entirely with real instruments and not computers. However, this does not help the song to sound any better. Not all of the experiments fail to produce desirable results. "Panic Station" is a fresh and interesting style for the band, although it seems unlikely Muse will continue with in that direction.
Even when they go back to what has worked in the past, success is mixed. There's "Survival", a little song you might have heard a few thousand times during the Olympic Games this past summer. The lyrics here reach an all new level of cheesiness, with Bellamy deadpanning "Race/life's a race/and I'm gonna win/yes I'm gonna win/I'll light the fuse/I'll never lose/I choose to survive/whatever it takes." It sounds like they took the whole winning and losing thing a little too seriously. All they had to was make Uprising Pt. 2 and call it a day. Muse and the Olympics should have been the perfect match. Instead, they released this stinker. After that you have "Save Me", and "Explorers", two tracks that sound just like nearly every other slow song they have done, excluding the ones on Absolution. That's without mentioning the "Prelude", which Muse incorrectly thought was necessary.
Muse has mentioned wanting to play a show from space. Unfortunately, they seem lost in it. 67/100
No comments:
Post a Comment