Black Holes and Revelations

"Starlight" is a decent song, but that's where the compliments start & end. They almost had something good with "Glorious", but then the singer kicked in and it turned into scuttery crap. This shit sounds like somebody taught Andrew Lloyd Webber to add effects over electric guitars and ditch the piano for keyboards.....and also turned Tory Peer Webber into an even bigger tax-dodging, snooty douchebag. This is Operatic Posh-Boy Emo. Excruciating trash. Just listen to "Hoodoo" & "Knights of Cydonia" back-to-back and tell me those weren't written by cunts. This is music for dorks who are maintaining a firm grip on their virginity. 👎👎

L’unica stella va al gruppo, perché se fosse stato un cantautore, il cantante avrebbe preso zero

Y.A.W.N.

Yuck

Can't stand Bellamy's voice. Listened to 3 minutes 29 seconds of take a bow and quite. I'm out

Really dislike it — the vocals, the histrionics of the music that probably plays OK live, the lyrics, all of it. Blehhh…..

Didn't like it at all

Too crowded and generally noisy Just 2 Songs that are gems

Well, this album certainly tried very hard to get my attention... I suppose there is a time and place for this kind of music - but in my opinion it is not on this list.

I’m on a plane headed back from Vegas. My ears hurt. I did not like this. I’m curious if the band sees this as “deep and meaningful art”. If so, they may be the types who find a particularly interestingly (or not) laid dog turd as “art”.

God I hate muse. Didnt give it a try. His voice makes me angry

Un peu l'équivalent d'une Civic avec des néons qui passe sur Marie-Victorin

Pew pew pew pew pew

Un album pompeux avec beaucoup trop d'arrangements et un chanteur qui se force à avoir une voix langoureuse. L'intermède de style Morricone est intéressant mais complètement forcé.

This was my first time listening to a full Muse album. Over the years I've heard them compared to a weak Radiohead style band, but I could never verify. Listening through this, their "top rated" album - I hear not only Radiohead, but lesser known bands they may have aped while creating this record. Opening track "Take A Bow" sounds exactly like an shitty synthesized/alternative radio version of the tiny indie rock band Pilot Drift's album Iter Facere's opening track "Caught In My Trap" (released 2 years earlier in 2004), like markedly close in tone and build up. Elsewhere Muse takes typical hints from Radiohead (both vocally and electronically) all over this album. I also hear a lot of California band PaloAlto (who were also inspired by Radiohead - hence the name) all over this album. It all just feels artificial. Like they're really trying to sound like they belong on the radio. They are the worst parts of Radiohead and glam rock's shittiest band: Queen. No thank you. 1/10

Not my cam

I don't give two sh*ts about this album

nah

I didn't listen it with much attention but i try and i dont know, the songs just dont stook up and i dont find them musically interesting, but like its very personal like its based on my music taste and i just dont fit in it.

Day 5: Unbelievably shite. Very disappointed because I was quite excited about this one, but I really couldn't finish it. I already knew supermassive black hole was class, but the rest that I managed to listen to were either boring, annoying, or just embarrassing

Not for me

If I wanted to listen to music that sounded like this I’d listen to U2, Queen or Depeche Mode, so I put on Khruangbin & Leon Bridges' "Texas Sun" instead. 1/5

Utter dross.

I am not super familiar with Radiohead, but Muse seems like something that was just trying to ride those coattails. I don't really get the appeal at all, and frankly it's just too much.

Didn't like 1 star

Meh...

Nope

I expected to hate this, and it still somehow managed to be worse than I expected.

Boring

I didn’t like Queen the first time around. Chucking them in a blender with a bit of The Strokes and a little U2 makes me like them even less this time around.

Below par Queen. And I bloody hate Freddie Mercury as well.

Just not for me

Some groups can be expressed mathematically, as the summation of particular influences the group is more than happy to acknowledge. Beatles + Black Sabbath + Pixies = Nirvana. Orange Juice + Strokes = Franz Ferdinand. With today's band, it's Genesis + Queen + Jeff Buckley + Radiohead = Muse. I can't be the only one to feel trepidation upon seeing the first side of that equation. Each one of those acts has some fundamental aspect that may very well deter the uncommitted listener (yes, even Jeff Buckley). The result threatens to be simultaneously stuffy, affected, histrionic and cold. And the result is stuffy, affected, histrionic and cold. Muse were one of the late-90s British groups to reject Britpop, with its punky irreverence and kitchen-sink concerns, instead borrowing excessive virtuosity, conceit and tone from prog whilst leader Matt Bellamy insisted on singing every damn note in Jeff Buckley's falsetto. My fellow travellers on life's long journey, you should know by now that a rejection of punk will never win my favour. Also, Muse's resuscitation of prog does not feel inspired, but just the inevitable recycling of everything recyclable from the past. At some point, some band was going to try and bring back The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and Muse thought it might as well be them. That paragraph didn't mention the other band, the band who has overshadowed Muse for their entire existence: Radiohead. In my review of The Bends, I discussed how The Bends accidentally invented the next decade's trend of landfill indie. Muse obviously nick plenty from Radiohead, but far more from OK Computer and Kid A. Now, I have no qualms whatsoever with such outright theft, as long as they do something with it. And to their credit, Muse do do something with their loot; unfortunately, they tend to do bad things. Black Holes and Revelations (yes, that title is wank) is the consequence of seizing upon one facet of a myriad of artists, then intensifying it to the exclusion of all other concerns. So, as stated before, Matt Bellamy's falsetto stems from Jeff Buckley's use of the falsetto. I've never been persuaded that Jeff Buckley is the greatest male singer of the 90s, but I understand that his falsetto broadened the dominant male range of the time, and was meant to extend how widely male singers could reach for. Just singing falsetto drastically misses that point, and incidentally is extremely annoying. Likewise, Muse steal Queen's theatricality, but forget to take along the camp fun Queen revelled in. The listener is put in the bizarre situation of hearing Muse attempt their own version of Peter Gabriel's Slipperman, all the while wishing that Muse would just get Phil Collins involved somewhere. And I've written before that OK Computer's student politics seem jejune nowadays, but where do Muse go with such concerns? Conspiracy theories and ancient aliens building the pyramids. The last parts would suggest that Muse have some sense of humour to lighten this broth, but this album is delivered with iron solemnity, as a deeply profound article. Even the deliberately comic bits (e.g., Knights of Cydonia) feel perfunctory when taken with the whole of the album, as if Muse just seek to avoid accusations of disappearing up their own fundament (and thus slip even further up the back passage). Okay, I admit I would have relented somewhat, in that Supermassive Black Hole has a decent, straightforward groove that redeems the album slightly, but then I took a walk. On that walk, I realised that Genesis + Queen + Jeff Buckley + Radiohead = Emo ELP. Emo ELP: Two words, five syllables, one unsalvageable album.