The Wow! Signal, the U.K. neo-prog band's latest, is a predictably heavy lift
The 10th Muse album takes its name from the Wow! Signal, an unexplained radio transmission detected by a mind-blown astronomer in 1977 that’s been held up as a possible example of extraterrestrial communication. The amount of pomp and pump Muse can slam into one song can have a certain wow-factor; tracks like “Uprising” and “Supermassive Black Hole” made them leaders in fist-pumping arena rock. But as is often the case with this ostentatiously bombastic U.K. band, their music won’t blow your mind so much as beat it into numb submission.
On The Wow! Signal, Muse work their signature pile-up of Queen and Korn and Radiohead, Seventies arena theatrics, Eighties synth-rock, Nineties alt-rock, and 2000s goth-metal. Frontman and mastermind Matt Bellamy returns to his longstanding theme of the endless search for something pure and real in a world of conformity, hypocrisy and alienation. On the pummeling “Cryogen” the coldness of outer space is a metaphor for the loneliness of life. The single “Be With You” goes from cathedral organ to electronic throb to AOR orgy, as Bellamy sings about longing to connect.
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They go from the operatic extremity of “The Dark Forest” (complete with a celestial chorale joining Bellamy to belt in Latin) to the dirge disco of “Nightshift Superstar” to the lurching glam-slam balladry of “Shimmering Stars,” Now and again, Muse find a good thing and stick with it. “The Sickness In You & I” is a wholly serviceable nu-metal anthem before it collapses into droning slapstick. “Hush” gets a huge boost of warmth and personality via a breathy Ellie Goulding feature, arriving like a rainbow after a monsoon that just took away your house with the tide.
The album ending “Space Debris” is a stripped-down (for them) wallow where they find a nice melody and let it grow a little as Bellamy moans about how love can float away into the great beyond just like cosmic junk. Ironically, it’s pretty down to earth, proof that it’d be ok if Muse kept things a little less intense. Of course, if they did, they wouldn’t be Muse.