Muse
The Resistance

And so, here we come again, Muse: I had a bit of skepticism, almost fear to approach the new album from the Teignmouth trio: fear that the mix of sound sensations that had made me love the music of Matt Bellamy and co. might be definitively gone, filed away like the fleeting infatuation of a moment: well, it only took a few seconds of listening to erase these hesitations of a non-believer and enjoy the pleasure of rekindling a flame never fully extinguished: Muse, in the peak of their artistic maturity and now fully aware of their potential, lay down a very heavy load: the most ambitious and complex album of their fortunately still brief career.

"The Resistance" is profoundly different, almost antithetical compared to its predecessor "Black Holes And Revelations," an album fundamentally simple in its structures ("Knights Of Cydonia" apart) despite the extreme variety of influences and sounds from song to song; "The Resistance" is more compact, more cohesive, the compositions are more extended in length, rich in tempo changes as we hadn't seen since the days of "Citizen Erased": at first impact, this album may almost seem like a fusion between the sense of melody now electronic and aggressive now poignant and intimate of "Absolution" and the psychedelic disorientation of an impending catastrophe typical of some segments of "Origin Of Symmetry," all cloaked in an aura of sumptuous electronic and symphonic arrangements that allow "The Resistance" to shine with its own light, the light of creativity and inspiration with which these refined sound artisans illuminate each of their single creations.

The return to more incisive and cutting sonorities compared to the recent past is marked by songs like the distorted and psych-rock-soaked electronic hard rock of "MK Ultra", a deadly mix of desperate melody and unexpressed sonic fury or even better "Unnatural Selection", seven minutes marked by a fiery and neurotic riff, Matt Bellamy's tight rhythms, and a chorus with an epic and pressing pace, which in the middle of the track breaks into a slow almost doomish interlude where Bellamy's distorted guitar and Chris Wolstenhome's bass venture lost, creating an atmosphere of a desolate post-industrial scenario, then closing with the initial dizzying theme. Episodes decidedly less ambitious but equally well-achieved are the compelling power-ballad "Guiding Light", sublimated by Matt Bellamy's stunning vocal performance, and the mischievous and reverberated groove of "Undisclosed Desires", which represents the most evident link between "The Resistance" and its predecessor BH&R.

It is easy to predict a future of omnipresence in the band's live setlists for songs that ooze museianity from every single note like the martial and arrogantly groovy groove just slightly contaminated by a pinch of psychedelia in "Uprising", where the clap-handing of "Time Is Running Out" and the suffocating loops of "Supermassive Black Hole" are perfectly merged, and the quasi-title track "Resistance", which starts as an intimate ballad à la "Sing For Absolution" then evolves into a pounding chorus that fades into a rarefied instrumental coda, while among the most surprising and experimental episodes is surely the hypnotic retro atmosphere of "I Belong To You", showing a Matt Bellamy in almost crooneresque dress who takes on French in an orchestral interlude reprised from Camille Saint-Saëns, although the absolute pinnacle, the masterpiece of the album is without a doubt the dreamy utopia of "United States Of Eurasia", which begins as a gentle ballad with a goosebump-inducing Matt Bellamy, then gains strength and epicity, unraveling between Arabian orchestrations and chasing Chopin-like piano lines, creating this majestic and fascinating piece that can be fully defined as "Bohemian Rhapsody" of Muse.

Finally, a small note of demerit for "Exogenesis", the closing suite divided into three parts for a total of thirteen minutes that, despite the ghostly Doomsday orchestrations of the first section, "Overture", where Bellamy returns to sing with the hallucinated and penetrating falsetto of "Micro Cuts" fails to convince as a unique musical discourse in its continuation, giving a vague idea of incompleteness, which however does not affect the final judgment of this wonderful album that in my opinion will not repeat the commercial success of "Absolution" and "Black Holes & Revelations", simply because it is structured in a completely different and more challenging way than the two illustrious predecessors but, thanks to its refinement, its ability to show a band always immediately recognizable to the ear yet ever capable of reinventing itself, and the myriad of different sound sensations that manage to blend perfectly creating a unique and majestic musical kaleidoscope will surely become an indispensable pillar for those who truly love and appreciate this band.