Don't get the hate, this is good stuff

fuck, meant to reply to the post above that post whoops

Absolution was incredible at the time but hasn't aged as well as the first two albums. Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist is probably one of the best tracks on it imo contrary to popular opinion. Excellent artwork and sense of atmosphere though.

Black Holes has some fun electro-rock songwriting on it but the production is crunchy mid-2000s Nokia-ringtone garbage, so much so they had to re-do the mixing on Starlight for radio play (and the subsequent mix, on the promo CD, sounds so much better than the album version it's not even funny).

I agree that their first two are their best but if you think Showbiz is "generally considered fantastic" you're just straight up wrong. Absolution and BH&R are definitely more acclaimed than Showbiz is.

It's funny, I've never heard early Muse described as prog-pop before but strip away the distortion and edgy vocal operatics and composition-wise you're right. It's a shame they went all poptimist like Coldplay or they could have probably developed a decent niche in the cleaner guitar sound of northern prog-pop (Manchester/Sunderland) that gets played on Radio 6.

They really, really need to find a good fucking producer with an ego bigger than Bellamy's to tell him which of his ideas are good and which are crap, and how to sequence an album cohesively. Bring in Brian Eno already and let's see what their Achtung Baby / Viva La Viva + Prospekt's March looks like.

>I'm not sure if our stuff should be heard by people under 13--I don't think it's fair on them. It's a bit dangerous really, you're playing around with very young heads there.
>Like when I was 12 I didn't even have a record player in the house--I never use to listen to records at all. When you're nine or ten you don't need to be listening to Culture Club, which is what's happening now. I think that's a bit wrong.
>Like they've got rid of that Junior Showtime where they used to play Nellie the Elephant and all those novelty records. All that's gone now and kids are listening to pop music when they're bloody nine.
>It makes me laugh though to see all these groups taking themselves so seriously. Like that Boy George reckons he's dead culturally important when all his record buyers are like eleven.

Attached: MESDOG.jpg (226x199, 22K)

The Resistance is badly underrated just because of the trash that came next. It's not really a Muse album but the album it is is a very good one. Good balance of rock and pop/other genre elements.

Yeah I agree, it's a good album

How are songs like New Born, Citizen Erased and stockholm Syndrome not prog?

MK Ultra and Exogenesis Symphony are still great, but I don't enjoy the rest much anymore
I actually hate Guiding Light and I Belong to You now, they are almost as cheesy as the stuff on their next albums

Matt's vocal performance on the aria from Samson and Delilah is legitimate career highlight, I can understand finding the rest of the song and Guiding Light cheesy though. I think it works better in isolation as an album because you can almost believe some of the more ridiculous moments moments like the cheek-popping on I Belong To You are tongue-in-cheek fun, while by Drones it's clear they're entirely serious and their attempts to ape their older sound sound flat as hell (e.g. Mercy).

It's a real shame, songs like Isolated System and Pressure suggest they still have songwriting talent in there somewhere but it's hidden under layers of trash. As I said earlier, they need a fucking producer to guide them, not no-name yes-men who are the studio equivalent of contractors. Same for Coldplay. So much wasted potential.

That's me frankly, though I don't listen to them much anymore.

Well that operaic part reminds me of United States of Eurasia which is even worse and Survival which is just awful, Muse have always been pretty overblown, but not as tasteless as on those.
I am not sure if Matt is so serious anymore or if he is just taking the piss honestly, have you seen their studio videos?

>they need a fucking producer to guide them
Exactly, it seems like Matt just throws shit at the wall until something sticks
He still can write good songs like Animals, The Handler, Reapers and the Dark Side, but it seems his band lost all identity.

And yeah, Coldplay also went straight down the Shitter after excellent Viva La Vida

Muse's studio albums never lived up to how great they are live. I do think Matt Bellamy is some kind of genius whose potential has been somewhat squandered by making music for teenagers.

Yeah their live shows are something else

Survival is one of their worst songs, I don't know why you'd mention it in the same sentence as even United States Of Eurasia, which I can see as being very divisive stylistically but at least musically competent.

RACE
IT'S A RACE
AND I'M GONNA WIN
YEAH, I'M GONNA WIN

Origin of Symmetry is one of the best sequenced albums I've heard. The flow is incredible. Baffling, because bad sequencing is a problem they've had ever since.

It was obviously made for the Olympics so I have no idea why the fuck they put it on the album

>squandered by making music for teenagers
So he's a genius, but for some reason you question his decision? Making music for anyone but teenagers is like making cartoons for adults, it's just inherently a flawed ideology.

Oceansize are Muse for adults

Attached: oceansize.jpg (491x503, 56K)

Oceansize was for tryhards

Real patricians listened to The Cooper Temple Clause

Attached: ctc.jpg (500x500, 94K)

the Olympics are no excuse for those lyrics, B'Yorke wrote Oceania for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Terrible. This was the real good stuff.

Attached: 4F3C953D-081A-4ADF-AF74-B521D75A87FB.jpg (220x220, 7K)

Based
youtube.com/watch?v=QfjiZm_eozE

Never heard of them, will check them out

ikr, imagine going from OOS, to Drones opening with the limp-wristed intro of Dead Inside

I still haven't listened to Simulation Theory on principle after hearing the first couple of singles on the radio and seeing the artwork that literally looks like fanart from Tumblr

Not sure how VAST are similar to Muse

There's actually so many really good bands from that 01-04 era in UK rock that were so good but so few of them made it past that era and just disappeared/broke up. Easy to forget even Muse at the time were indie and didn't even have a US label and literally got as big as they did thanks to monster touring efforts across europe and asia.

Simulation Theory is kinda fun in a cheesy self aware way which makes it better than last 2 albums, but it's still far from good

What were some Similar bands? I know Biffy Clyro who were also lucky and got big

There's like one or two really good tunes and a lot of crap, which basically sums up their output from the last decade.

i don't think I could even name them all. I lived in the UK at the time, and there was a ridiculous amount of music coming out at the time.

Now...nothing but cheesy obnoxious rapping. How the mighty have fallen.

People here hate pompous prog rock. It's just the way things are.

I don’t really see how you don’t

Not similar to Muse but here's some stuff I remember
youtube.com/watch?v=5SWIPlgciSs
youtube.com/watch?v=ospxlZZM2Hw
youtube.com/watch?v=PocdkWB9Vl0 (couldn't find the video)
youtube.com/watch?v=Sup3LsIy6Ow
youtube.com/watch?v=ZpdsUU5tihM
youtube.com/watch?v=wzy9tsYv07o

Listening to this rn, pretty good Radioheadish stuff

Attached: 6F776870-EEEF-4C0C-AEFF-551A03A32E5D.jpg (355x355, 26K)

Neat, never heard of any of these bands
Do you know Amplifier?

youtube.com/watch?v=RJz2ueniLFw

yeah.

At least I got to see Muse live back in 03. It was unreal how good the show was, and it was a smaller theater type venue. Seeing Matt at the time belt out Micro Cut and them performing Showbiz/OoS/Early Absolution stuff...makes me sad people now only know of their big stadium stuff. It's not the same.

God damn, some of those names take me back. 80s Matchbox B line disaster is literally a name I havent heard in like 15 years.

A great song of theirs even before that album is Rain:

youtu.be/uOmcCavPN_k

Walking around at night is perfect for that song.

what's your favorite Muse B-Side? My top 5 would be
1. Futurism
2. Fury
3. Dead Star
4. Easily
5. Eternally Missed or Crying Shame

>no Glorious

>mfw Maxïmo Park who were a b-list act for most of the 2000s are now consistently better than Kaiser Chiefs or any of the other indie rock bands from that era, still chart consistently in the Top 20, and have aged like a fine wine into a British R.E.M. while most of their contemporaries have dropped their guitars and tried to cash in on chart pop trends

youtube.com/watch?v=tBzYuJzy_B0
youtube.com/watch?v=mStNOUpGcw4
youtube.com/watch?v=xYIRCLldkb8

This is obviously the best Muse song ever made
youtube.com/watch?v=RHWY9BZdLgY

Seems like fairly average landfill indie to me, still better than new Kaisers album though

OoS had tons of B-sides. The Gallery and Hyper Chondriac Music were great. I'd have to re-listen to remember them all. Been a long time.

Futurism is definitely number one, makes me super nostalgic for the age of physical single released. Popular music has fallen so bad.

Off the top of my head:
1. Futurism
2. Glorious
3. Easily
4. Overdue
5. Forced In

Oh I just realised Dead Stars was not a B-Side but a double A-side with In Your World

yeah, they were released to promote Hullabaloo

>So he's a genius,

When you watch him perform in the earlier days there seemed to be something very interesting and unique going on inside his mind which he expressed through his playing. Making pop/rock music is very restrictive so I'd love to have seen him make something truly uninhibited, perhaps exclusively on piano.

Doesn’t ring a bell but this is pretty damn good. Anyone remember the Thrills?
youtu.be/A1fGNCvZL_w
youtu.be/tzhZzIzJqek

*inhales deeply into the mic*

the energy of the Hullabaloo concert is something just utterly missing from anything they've done in the past decade

youtube.com/watch?v=XHumKldHw8I

Really it's no use trying to get a band who are approaching Tom Cruise-esque middle age to re-capture that lightning in a bottle now. We need young blood. There's some good little lo-fi Roxy Music-esque prog-pop bands scattered around the north, Glasgow, and London, but nothing as exciting and hardcore as Muse once was. The most tightest band I've seen perform live this decade is probably Field Music, who are... not comparable to Muse in genre, to say the least.

youtube.com/watch?v=g7vmWf7KVSM&t=6452s

yep, great record.It's just trendy to hate Muse (course their later stuff is garbage, but that's true for most bands)

When I first heard Muse it was around the time of Hullabulloo and the Dead Star / In Your World single. I don’t think you can ask for a better introduction to them

The other thing that Matt literally just dropped the ball on was lyrics. They're so shit now. Back then, especially with OoS there was a real sense of anger, resentment and cynicism that was really palpable. It was angry but in a really unique way. That's all been gone for ages now.

He is just lazy imo. Could also be lack of creativity. I just hope the next album has more than 3 enjoyable tracks on it.

>matt’s vocals
Holy shit

I'm pretty sure it's parenthood, same as Chris Martin. It doesn't have to be a creative death knell but it can be if you let it.

Compare to Brett Anderson from Suede, who grew too old to keep pretending to be a drugged-up horny goth and became a dad but has used it as inspiration to write some of his darkest lyrics about being kept awake at night by the fear of losing your children to a freak accident and the omnipresent reminders of death and decay that come with bringing up a family in the countryside. Spoken-word tracks about roadkill and burying dead animals in the garden so he can dig up the bones to show to his son etc. and musing on piles of old possessions left by flytippers representing the ephemeral nature of life.

For some people family life trumps artistic integrity and it all becomes a bit of a joke, it seems, others manage (or decide) to balance the two.

Suede's Reunion albums were so much better than anything Damon, Liam and Noel have done this decade

This was a belter
youtu.be/2TXXZ3wLtbw

Agreed, one of the most pleasant musical surprises of the decade for me along with Bowie's brief return. Especially the fact they released proper singles with b-sides for Bloodsports. Hope they do that again for their next album... They say they're going "back to basics" and making a straight rock set-up album next, which if the bonus track Manipulation is anything to go by will be amazing to rival their debut.

youtube.com/watch?v=Rl961zczexI

not me r/n
youtube.com/watch?v=1dIsD4gVbEE

I saw them last year (in Galway, Ireland). They were fantastic. Their guitarist is an animal.

Indeed, people cry about Bernard Butler, but Richard Oakes has been really good as well.

I managed to buy the special edition of The Blue Hour (which came with a bonus CD of the album mixed without vocals as well as commentary by various band members and engineers) but I wish I could find a copy of the Japanese CD release of Night Thoughts, which came with an instrumental mix of that album on a bonus disc, first pressing only

bump

also bump, this is an interesting thread

thanks op, im gonna go nostalgically listen to muse now, cheers

np bro

You forgot Unintended

and Uno wtf