Muse - v. Will of the People (rel Aug 26, 2022)

[KevShmev]

Been listening to this for free on their facebook page the last few days, and I am digging it like crazy.  First listen was kind of meh, but it exploded on me on the second listen.  "I Belong to You" is simply incredible; that will go down as one of their best songs to date.

As for the Queen thing, there are definitely some moments like sound Queen-ish, not in the sense of sounding like a particular Queen song, but in the sense of sounding like something Queen would have done, but it is not like that is new or anything.  Besides, if nothing else, maybe now that will get the knuckleheads who always say, "They sound like Radiohead," to now say, "They sound like Queen." 

[TheVoxyn]

Been listening to this for free on their facebook page the last few days, and I am digging it like crazy.  First listen was kind of meh, but it exploded on me on the second listen.  "I Belong to You" is simply incredible; that will go down as one of their best songs to date.

As for the Queen thing, there are definitely some moments like sound Queen-ish, not in the sense of sounding like a particular Queen song, but in the sense of sounding like something Queen would have done, but it is not like that is new or anything.  Besides, if nothing else, maybe now that will get the knuckleheads who always say, "They sound like Radiohead," to now say, "They sound like Queen." 

Have you listened to the united states of eurasia? There is a bit in there that is exactly the same as Bohemian Rhapsody.

[KevShmev]

I've listened to the whole cd several times.  I didn't hear "Bohemian Rhapsody" in that song; perhaps you could give me a time stamp and I'll check it out. 

[TheVoxyn]

I've listened to the whole cd several times.  I didn't hear "Bohemian Rhapsody" in that song; perhaps you could give me a time stamp and I'll check it out. 

At least, I think it's from Bohemian Rhapsody. It's Queen at least .
1:15-1:25, especially the bit right after 1:15.

[ariich]

That just sounds like Queen's general style, not any particular song or even era.

I've only heard United States (which I think is great) and this afternoon I listened to the Uprising single on Spotify for the first time, and I think it's great! Very strong Marilyn Manson vibe, only less dark.

[KevShmev]

Actually, the way it explodes out of the verse is similar to what "We Are the Champions" does, but it doesn't actually sound like it.

[BlobVanDam]

at about 1:18 or so the two chords are VERY obviously Queen influenced, and sound similar to We Are the Champions leading into the chorus (they're the exact same two chords, with very similar sounding guitar harmonies). It jumped out at me pretty obvious. It's only a second or two though.
Listening to the song (and Muse) for the first time here just because I was interested in hearing if it was similar to Bohemian Rhapsody.

Damn, beaten to it

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

Darn, I love this CD. It's definitely a massive grower. MK Ultra might be one of my favorite Muse songs.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

Alright, here's my veredict after several listens by now:

This is an amazing Muse record. Definitely different from everything they had done up to this point, but a welcome surprise nonetheless. we get to see a truly different side of Matthew Bellamy's musical inspirations and influences, and it's noticeable since the first moment a piano note is played in the album. Piano is abundant in this album, which is a good thing of course judging by Matthew Bellamy's amazing prowess with the piano. The Exogenesis Symphony was definitely a grower, when I listened to it at first I didn't know what to think, but know I think it's one of the best things Muse has ever done. The last part, Redemption, reminds me of Citizen Erased's ending, but more grand and more epic. Matthew Bellamy's voice sounds more mature than ever, and his piano/guitar work here is outstanding. Dom's drum work is exceptional as well (I think of MK Ultra, which is my favorite song on the record by the way) and Chris shines in the bass (as he always does) as well. I definitely hear the Queen influence, and that's a good thing of course because Queen can't be a bad influence, or can they? I agree with Kev's point at the knuckleheads, calling the album a Queen tribute like comparing past Muse albums with Radiohead's music.

Where am I trying to get? Muse still sounds like Muse. Songs like Unnatural Selection, MK Ultra, Resistance and Uprising still have that Muse vibe which most of us fans have come to love in the past years. The best thing? It's a massive grower. It took a while to digest, but when it did, it was one of the most rewarding musical experiences I've had in the past year. The worst thing? It's less than 60 minutes long.  

[ariich]

Thanks for the review!

God I am SO looking forward to tomorrow now. As soon as I get out from work/college, I'm going straight to the stores to buy the new Muse and PT albums

[Nihil-Morari]

First listen now!

Just finished United States... and I can only say one thing:



Wow. This is exactly how I pictured Muse, but never really came out with older albums.
I really felt with older albums (with the exeption of Absolution) that they were going for the middle way far too often. Restraining from sounding either too poppy, or too Queen-esque, or too proggy. This albums explores their limits on all of those accounts, but I feel it really is close to the chest work from Matthew and the guys.

Wonder what'll happen if this album grows as you guys say it does.


Holy update, batman:

I'm nearly done with my first listen on this albums, and wow, it keeps getting better. This one will grow, but this is now already one of my favourite muse records, together with Absolution. Incredible.

[Portrucci]

Glad to see people on this page enjoying the album 

My sister is a massive muse fan and she was quite let down with the album. But so far I really like it. 

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

The album as a whole is a grower. There are only a handful few songs that clicked the first time, like MK Ultra and Unnatural Selection. God, those songs rock. My only complaint with MK is that the super awesome and chugging riff should have been used more, like in New Born for example.

[ReaPsTA]

I love Undisclosed Desires. Otherwise I'm not sure on this one.

[Jamesman42]

I love Undisclosed Desires. Otherwise I'm not sure on this one.

I just listened to this on Facebook, holy crap it is amazing.

I really need to explore this band!

[shadowfex]

After nearly a week of owning this album I absolutely cannot understand some of the criticism.

[PixelDream]

It doesn't have the banging heavy moments of Absolution & Origin. Still, that song Uprising is catchy and triumphant as f**k!! May the rest of the album click for me in this way as well.

[Portrucci]

It doesn't have the banging heavy moments of Absolution & Origin.

Ahem, 6:27 onwards in Unnatural Selection 

[ariich]

Picked it up on way home from work, on first listen now

Loving it so far! Uprising is a great song, Resistance was good (reminded me somewhat of Starlight, but way more interesting) and Undisclosed Desires was totally groovy! On United States now, which I've heard a couple of times before and is great.

[ariich]

Wow, really really good album! The only song I'm pretty uninterested in is Guiding Light, feels a lot like this album's Invincible (which I also find quite dull), but the rest ranges from good to incredible. Exogenesis is pretty wonderful as well.

[skydivingninja]

Hm...after listening to this a while its gotten better.  Unnatural Selection isn't as good as I remember, and Guiding Light still isn't very good, but the others are still pretty good songs, and Exogenesis is still cool.

[emindead]

Actually, the way it explodes out of the verse is similar to what "We Are the Champions"

That's it.

[LeeHarveyKennedy]

That just sounds like Queen's general style, not any particular song or even era.

I've only heard United States (which I think is great) and this afternoon I listened to the Uprising single on Spotify for the first time, and I think it's great! Very strong Marilyn Manson vibe, only less dark.

And I thought I was the only one who noticed that.  The first time I heard Uprising on the radio, I thought "Is this some sort of Disposable Teens remix?"

[Genowyn]

I bought it today along with The Incident, but have yet to listen to it. (because Incident took precedence ). Hopefully I'll enjoy it.

[LeeHarveyKennedy]

I bought it today along with The Incident, but have yet to listen to it. (because Incident took precedence ). Hopefully I'll enjoy it.

I picked up both of them on iTunes, and The Incident leads into The Resistance nicely.

[cookienut]

Ok this album is no Absolution...infact most albums will never match that level for me.

But...this Muse album indeed is super awesome. It's got the mix about right with Prog elements, pop and hard rock.

The orchestral movements, Bellamy's voice and the drumming are tight. A very well rounded performance. One of the albums of the year. It does have Queen influence...but that's what makes it awesome.

Im very happy with this release.

[Zeltar]

First listen, it's pretty cool but nothing groundbreaking overall. I absolutely love Uprising and it's sweet groove. The real meat of the album is Exogenesis. Fuck, that thing blew me away. It's bombastic, massive, definitely one of the best things Muse has ever done.

[antigoon]

euray-SHAAA! SHAA! SHAA!

[OsMosis2259]

euray-SHAAA! SHAA! SHAA!

  I think its one of the highlights for me along with Exogenesis

[ariich]

Does anyone else love Undisclosed Desires? It has a nice groove and I love the chorus!

[fivestring]

My least favorite Muse album by far.

My first full listen was in my car as I drove to band practice and home. I have good aftermarket stereo equipment.  All that came to mind was boring, uninspired, typical, overly slow and just not exciting at all.

Then I got home and put it in my stereo and listened more critically. Still - it's not exciting or a record that makes me want to listen to it over and over. I heard more of the details and the effort put into it and appreciated some of the cooler parts (few and short as they were).  My song break-downs:

UPRISING - Fairly good opening track. It's an uptempo, catchy pop tune with a lot of pomp to it. It seems they kind of played it safe through this one - but that helped make it likeable.

RESISTANCE - I'd ditch the first 45 seconds or so of the "eerie sounds" and start right at the piano riff.  I'd like bigger sounding guitars for the chorus parts. I'd cut the "epic" end too.  The beginning and end parts don't change the feel of the song for me. The core of the song is solid Muse.  Not bad.

UNDISCLOSED DESIRES - sounds of 80's art-pop. It sort of reminds me of the Eurythmics.  That's not bad though. The chorus could somehow sound bigger.

U.S. of E. - boring start. Vocal melodies are far too typical Muse - heard it before. Many say this is reminiscent of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I totally agree as it's heard at about 1:18.  The eastern-sounding theme is really unexpected and the whole middle of this song gets far better. There was a really good guitar solo. I enjoyed this part. The ending goes on for far too long and the piano and whatnot is boring.  I'm not discounting the musicianship - just it doesn't add to the song.

GUIDING LIGHT - This sounds like a lost track off of U2's Achtung Baby album.  Seriously.  Meh Muse song.

UNNATURAL SELECTION - More energy in this one - big rock tune.  I started to like it. Then the middle section -  too long of a departure. The guitar tone and playing in the solo here annoyed me.  The end of the song picks back up - but the flow of the song was messed up with the middle part.

MK ULTRA - This track I really liked. More typical Muse-rock. I apologize for lack of description here - but I just liked the song.

I BELONG TO YOU + a bunch of french - Not sure what to think of this track. It has a bouncy, piano driven first section. It's pretty good. The middle part goes a whole new direction and has a few different themes that are made to work together - not sure if they do that well though.  Over all that - there's a sax solo or some kind of horn.  Then the main theme comes back a bit for the end.  I guess I don't immediately identify with this song and it's parts. It's just ok.

THE SYMPHONY SECTIONS (3 parts)  - I can tell this was an ambitious project and it was quite a risk to put this on the album. I would have liked to have heard greater variation and movements. Something more powerful. I feel it's overall too mellow and ends the album on a lack-luster note.

Overall - there's a lot of orchestration throughout the album and I think they used it too much or relied on it excessively. Others have said the album was poorly produced and there was too much compression. I'm not an expert at hearing that - but this album really lacks energy and I know there should be a lot more of it in several places.

[ReaPsTA]

Does anyone else love Undisclosed Desires? It has a nice groove and I love the chorus!

Right here man. Best part of the album without question.

[SoundscapeMN]

lol Shitfork

As with so many 21st-century mainstream (or quasi-mainstream) rock albums unafraid to stuff 10 tons of quasi-operatic melodrama into 60 or so minutes, The Resistance will be easily dismissed by those into the Grizzly Bear/Dirty Projectors brand of orchestrated art-rock. You know, where the album has a pleasing ramshackle feel under the surface-level skillfulness, the sense that the vocal acrobatics or tricky instrumental interplay could suddenly veer into uncomfortable, mock amateurish expressionism.

By contrast, you never get the sense that Muse are anything less than in total control of their "difficult" music at all times. Throughout The Resistance, frontman Matt Bellamy is ready and willing to foreground his chops, be it tickling the ivories, hopping octaves, or tossing out increasingly tasteful solos. If the The Resistance is "about" anything, aside from the conceptual malarkey encoded in the lyrics, it's about mastery, ego-security, etc. It's the kind of all-caps, no half-stepping ART-ROCK that closes with a three-part mini-epic so shameless about its own classic rock bigness that it's billed as a "Symphony", complete with "Overture". Jumped ship yet?

For the wary or outright dismissive, however, The Resistance is also a very smartly sequenced album. it opens with the most "pop" sequence of the band's career, a three-song sequence aping the stadium-grade synth-rock of Depeche Mode at their crossover height. It then segues into a middle section of hard (but not too hard) rock, nodding in the direction of grottier bands like Queens of the Stone Age or System of a Down without stripping away the sparkle. Only then does The Resistance shift into the sort of fist-pumping, kitchen-sink prog you were probably expecting. It's canny: Leading the uncommitted down a drum machine paved path of catchy 1980s revivalism and straight into the path of an army of kids straddling the gap between entry-level classical and "Headbanger's Ball".

And "army" is right: Unity in the face of faceless post-industrial society grinding down beautiful stuff like love and friendship is perhaps Muse's great theme. Bellamy is constantly tossing out mass-shout-along-ready lyrics like "we will be victorious" and "they won't stop breaking us down." Songs get titles like "Uprising" and (natch) "Resistance". Things break down easily into a "we" (rarely does an "I" creep into Bellamy's songwriting) and a "they." Your age-old, rock-standard good (we, the fans) vs. evil (them, the nebulous straight government-corporate nexus) set-up, got it?

But unlike the creepy mass-rally overtones that so bugged early rock critics about music designed to pack civic centers-- or thrilled them when it was punk leading in the kids in revolt-- you get the sense that Bellamy's lyrics are an outgrowth of wanting to make his music as big and inclusive as possible, rather than any inchoate political impulses. No doubt Bellamy fancies himself some sort of social crusader, but his mush-headed vagueness (like Bono and Chris Martin and just about any Brit frontman operating on this scale) is designed to inspire warm fuzzy feelings of togetherness and resistance rather than offer any ten-point plan to overthrow the emotionally fascist modern world.

So let's take the warm fuzzy bigness of the music at face value. It's understandable if the Buckley mannerisms and Mercury multi-tracking on "The United States of Eurasia" aren't your cup of tea. You may cringe at the Pavlov-approved crescendos that surge through "Guiding Light", the sort of thing where you imagine a ProTools preset producers have nicknamed "10,000 People Holding up Bics They Bought Especially for the Concert." And then there's "Exogenesis", the aforementioned "Symphony" in three parts. Now a Daydream Nation style knowing "trilogy" this is not. There's massed strings. There's half-time chest-beating theatrics ready for flashpots and Vegas set design. If it's not quite Keith Emerson's territory-- or Celine Dion's, for that matter-- it's a similarly grandiose ballpark where the fans wear slightly different clothes.

But still: I'm a punk at heart, suspicious about the meeting of rock band and orchestra after all these years, and even I have to admit there's something cornily beautiful about "Exogenesis", like Radiohead with no fear of pushing things until the motor bursts into flames. Judged on its own terms-- out of control scale, genre-smashing ambition, musical and vocal virtuosity-- The Resistance is a success. It's just the kind of success where you have to appreciate a guy who builds his own guitars daring himself to make the next song even more rapturously overstuffed and classically cathartic. It's an album you can embrace or get the fuck out of its way. There's really no in between. It's high-test pop-prog hokum, better suited to mashing buttons to kill wizards or gorging on a stack of four-color batshittery than working on your thesis or darning your socks.

Video games or comics are probably a closer comparison than most of the music Pitchfork covers, actually. There's a prevailing idea that there's something spiritually and emotionally dangerous about grown men and women spending most of their alone-time immersed in improbable fantasies where interpersonal relationships and the traumas of the real world can be dispatched/ignored via magical powers. But do you want to wallow in grey impotence in the face of quotidian bullshit every damn minute of the day? Escape, whether via Matt Bellamy or the Immortal Iron Fist or the fine folks at Nintendo, shouldn't be a dirty word, at least when used sparingly.

— Jess Harvell, September 15, 2009

they actually give it a more favorable review than many, just to stroke their ego saying they know better than the blogs that are ripping it. Reverse Psychology perhaps.

[ariich]

Have to say, some people seem to be judging this album against completely different criteria than all of Muse's other albums!

[skydivingninja]

Gonna do a track-by-track real quick:

Uprising-Nothing bad about this at all.  I quite like it.
Resistance-Same thing.  Nothing too bad about this.  Sounds like OoS Muse
Undisclosed Desires-Man this song is awesome.  Huge departure for Muse, but still very fun and has a great groove.
USE-Starts off great, but those Queen-like sections just don't work too much for me.  Good song, but there's something else Muse could've done with it, I'm sure.
Guiding Light-ick.
Unnatural Selection-Started off so well, but like fivestring said, it loses its flow in the middle.  The instrumental's just sort of boring.
MK Ultra-Good stuff.
I Belong to You-Another great experimental song.  I like this a lot.
Exogenesis-Its good, but like Fivestring said, its too mellow for the cathartic ending I was expecting.

Still pretty disappointed after a few listens, but unlike The Incident, which has grown on me a LOT since I heard it, this hasn't really blown up to greatness for me.