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"Muse" CD Cover Download

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Album Description: In 2004, U.K. favorite Muse broke through in the U.S. with Absolution and major performances across America that won legions of new fans. In 2006, Muse takes a bold new step with Black Holes And Revelations, a powerful, upbeat epic album that takes the band’s music to a whole dimension. Once again co-produced by Rich Costey (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave), Muse incorporates influences from electronica and Prince to pure pop. The album is sure to be a revelation to those still unfamiliar with the 2005 Brit award winner for Best Live Act who headlines this summer’s Reading and Leeds festivals.Sounding like the confident, ambitious superstars they already are in their native UK, Muse follows up their breakthrough Absolution with an album that tempers the trio's unabashed grandiosity and apocalyptic obsessions with a smart pop groove. The minimalist angst of the opening "Take A Bow" may bridge the goth-pop conceits of the collection's successful predecessor, but those expectations are quickly kicked aside by "Starlight"'s synth-pop bliss, the falsettoed, space-disco thump of "Supermassive Black Hole" and the chilly, New Wave redux sheen of "Map of the Problematic"; so much for being held hostage to those early Radiohead comparisons. Indeed, on the lilting "Soldier's Poem" vocalist Matthew Bellamy cannily channels Freddie Mercury while "Assassin" pulses with the familiar metallic nerve and lyrical dread of Muse past. But by the time "Knights of Cydonia" erupts in a wrenching, melodramatic climax that somehow fuses ELP, Davie Allan, Procul Harum and Chris Isaak with enough giddy abandon to suspend disbelief, Muse have long since proved their case as genre-be-damned rock world-beaters. --Jerry McCulley

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Muse CD Cover Download

Amazon.com Review:

Album Description: Aussie limited edition of 2003 album features 14 tracks & includes a bonus DVD (PAL) featuring a 40 minute documentary on the making of the album, band outtakes, & a studio photo gallery. Festival.One can't listen to Muse without hearing Bends-era Radiohead, so it's necessary to start there. But for all the familiar grandeur and gloom, Muse's other catharsis-rock influences, like Queen, Slade, and even Black Sabbath, provide the band with a dazzling, heart-on-their-sleeves theatricality. Always threatening to layer on another falsetto from singer Matt Bellamy, or conjure more guitar crunch from the ether, Absolution is downright Baroque in parts, like a Rufus Wainwright-penned rock opera fantasy. Yes, the record is completely unoriginal. But when these guys let it rip, there's no doubt they have the fever. "Stockholm Syndrome," for one, could only be produced by True Believers with a lust for power chord drama, full of angst, envy, and the bitter end of it all. If you wish a certain Thom Yorke-led outfit from Oxford had made another record or two before evolving into minor-key art rockers, Muse carry the torch for another few miles, gloriously and tragically unaware that they're running in circles. --Matthew Cooke

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Muse CD Cover Download

Amazon.com Review: Product DescriptionThe fan base for Muse grows with every release. 2006 s Black Holes And Revelations broke into the U.S. Top 10 while hitting #1 in the U.K. and much of Europe, where it sold 1 million copies and was #3 on NME's Albums Of The Year list. A multiple BRIT Award winner for Best Live Act,
Muse then staged two massive sold-out performances at 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium in London last June, which increasingly are recognised as amongst the definitive live moments of the year. The best performances from those concerts, as well as bonus backstage footage, are presented on the CD/DVD set HAARP. The concerts once again demonstrated the raw power and unquenchable ambition of one of the UK's most successful long-term bands and one of, if not the, greatest, most ambitious live act in the world at the present time.Amazon.co.ukIt takes a certain sort of band to fill Wembley stadium, one unafraid to embrace scale, flirt with pomposity, and perform the odd grand gesture. Watching Muse's live CD/DVD H.A.A.R.P--recorded over two nights in June 2007--you're left wondering if Wembley is quite big enough to hold them. From the grand opening, when Muse ascend from an underground chamber and walk down a central ramp flanked by men in yellow chemical splash suits to Matt Bellamy's lengthy, florid turns at the grand piano, no opportunity is missed to make H.A.A.R.P seem anything less than a spectacle. Shot in high definition, the camera-work is as snappy and dynamic as any movie blockbuster, with special attention to the crowd, who are picked out with sometimes breathtaking detail. Fans may gripe over the tracklisting--the DVD has been edited down, meaning four tracks, including "Bliss" have been left on the cutting floor–-but casuals should be satisfied with the selection: there's the hits ("Supermassive Black Hole", "Knights of Cydonia") and on the DVD, a noble rendition of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good". --Louis Pattison