Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating ***
There comes a time in a groups, hopefully distinguished career, where a listener may stop and think, well that was good but it wasn’t really as awesome as everybody raved on and on about. That might be the case with Muse’s sixth album The 2nd Law.
One of the band’s great strengths over the last few albums is the absolute conviction that they have created something approaching unique, something nothing less than genuinely superb and out of this world. Even including Black Holes and Revelations into this equation, which after quite a few plays revealed an album that wasn’t quite up to scratch, full of pit falls and loosely tied together with some very appealing songs as Map of the Problematique and Invincible, it still suited the canon and the ways of Muse.
The difficulty with The 2nd Law is that it was always going to compete or even top 2009’s seminal and outrageously brilliant The Resistance. The ways of Muse may have changed to get round this annoying block in their path to being considered the best rock act of the early 21st century but is such a radical departure from the faith necessary?
Every band must grow, experiment outside of its comfort zone or else stagnation or worse sets in. However the band that always gets associated with Muse, the 70’s and 80’s supreme rock band Queen made this mistake and although The 2nd Law in no way can be equated to Hot Space, there are a few cracking songs on the album after all, it is still a timely reminder that no band is infallible and all artists are capable of making an album that is so “out there” that coming down might be one of the single most difficult things for them to do.
On a couple of the songs, including Panic Station, feels as though the band are not following the best laid path and instead the vocals and sound resonate with the feel of something that George Michael might even consider using, it is uninspiring and a backward step.
That said the song that they released for the 2012 London Olympics is surprisingly well versed and so insanely brilliant that it makes everything that is deeply disappointing about the new album seem just that little bit brighter. However a band of the undoubted immense quality of Muse should not rely on a song such as Survival to make people buy their music.
The 2nd Law will be surely be another number one album for Muse but it will be a painful addition to the others that have made the top spot.
Ian D. Hall