MUSE
"The Resistance"
Released: Sept. 15, 2009
Genre: Alternative/Symphonic Rock

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An interesting mix of '80s rock and '90s metal, 'The Resistance' is a curious new piece drawing on old classics such as Queen to create an entirely unoriginal mess.

I KNOW WHAT Matthew Bellamy has been doing on weekends.

He's been listening to Queen.

On their new album, "The Resistance," English alternative rock band Muse play around with pastiche — but I'm not sure it's on purpose.

We've all known for years that vocalist Bellamy has a marvelous falsetto upper range; one has only to listen to about three seconds of "Unintended" to realize this. I've always considered him a new-age Freddie Mercury … but never has the parallel been so frighteningly apparent before now.

I'll admit, my first experience of this album was via YouTube. A friend put on "United States of Eurasia & Collateral Damage," and asked me what it sounded like.

Sounds like? I dunno, rock? This is Queen, isn't it?

Of course, it wasn't Queen. But it had that same campy feel: the triumphal guitar, the vibrato-heavy falsetto, the dynamic changes. Without listening closely, it's all too easy to confuse the two. And though I like Queen, it's hard for me to say the same about this parody. It sounds lovely, yes, but it's hardly original.

For a band with so much songwriting talent and originality as Muse, it's just hard to listen to such a blatant imitation. I don't want to buy a Muse album to listen to Queen. I have Queen albums for that. This seems logical to me, but apparently Bellamy missed the memo.

That's not the only parody I hear, either. The single "Uprising" sounds like Radiohead, "Unnatural Selection" is straight Metallica, and "I Belong to You" is an unnerving mixture of Franz Ferdinand and Her Space Holiday. Parts sound like a late '90s mix tape, others like a "best of" '80s rock.

This is not to condemn the entire album, however. "Guiding Light" contains the same pompous but lovable guitar solos I've come to expect from Muse, and the title track, "Resistance," is quite wonderful, with spacey melodies tied to much sharper riffs.

The piece de resistance, though, would have to be the three-part, 14-minute "Exogenesis." Drawing heavily from Saint-Saëns operas as well as Chopin and Liszt sonatas, it flows from operatic ballads to riff-y alternative metal to triumphal rock (with only slight Queen influences) and back again. With symphonic and piano backing, this is one of my favorite Muse track(s) to date.

I feel it necessary to mention here that lyrically, this album is absolutely hysterical. The thing is, Bellamy is a conspiracy theorist, and though I've always suspected that this was the basis behind some of his more spacey, techno songs, it's never been more apparent than here. On "Uprising," he sings:

Paranoia is in bloom,
The PR transmissions will resume,
They'll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down,
And hope that we will never see the truth around …

I mean, wow. I don't even know what to say to that. And it's not only that song, but the entire album that continues on in some weird anarchist, drug-crazed, conspiracy-starting nonsense. Yikes.

Overall, "The Resistance" sounds like Marvin the Martian meets Freddie Mercury. I appreciate both space metal and campy '80s rock, but I'm a little conflicted over how much I like the combination of the two. I suppose any Queen fan would appreciate it, and other parts are very standard Muse (insofar as Muse is ever standard).

Frankly, though, it's not my favorite, and nowhere near the quality of their last release, "Black Holes and Revelations."

In the words of a friend, "This is the only album I've ever pirated and then deleted because it was so bad." So really, not the best recent release. I'd give it a miss.

"The Resistance" Track List

Listen to Muse's latest release thanks to these embeds from grooveshark.com: