Muse - Black Holes And Revelations (CD 2006)

Muse have never been a band to blend into the background, never a band to simply slot into a genre, never a band that hasn't provoked a reaction. They have always been big in sound, atmosphere & great songs.

'Black Holes & Revelations', however, takes things to a whole new level. I mean, this stuff is MASSIVE. This is EPIC, INNOVATIVE, GRANDIOSE & EXPLOSIVE. It's staggering to hear such scope, vision and imagination from a band once accused of being Radiohead wannabe's...

Muse take the meaning of quirky & weird to new heights. For example, single, 'Supermassive Black Hole' is nothing short of brilliant. There's a hugely heavy bass line & beat to it contrasting wonderfully with the drawn out vocals layered on top of the backing vocals talking of 'glaciers melting in the dead of night'. It's strange but you can't help but be absorbed by it all.
Then there's the impossible heaviness of the guitar riffs & drum rolls to 'Assassin', yet again with those weird but wonderful multi-layered vocals which are simply haunting.
But then take songs like 'Hoodoo'; the song starts with a spanish guitar intro, only to morph into a soft verse followed by a grand piano-driven chorus... yet somehow it fits beautifully.
The album is closed by yet another change in direction; 'Knights of Cydonia' goes into the kind of madly progressive territory that you'd usually expect of a band like Tool. It starts off sounding like some kind of cosmic western theme tune, shoots off into Matt Bellamy's lone vocals echoing out of your speakers before, quite unexpectably, ripping into an explosion of guitars & drums - it just sounds so huge!

And what's amazing is that, despite Bellamy throwing literally everything he has at his disposal into the mix & creating such inventive & challenging music, it's so accessible to the point that it's completely absorbing & utterly addictive. There's always a thin line between genius & complete insanity, & it's hard to say which side of the line Bellamy has stumbled. Either way, 'Black Holes...' is stunning.

This is a masterpiece to lose yourself in & never find your way out of.